In 2019, when Revathi Advaithi took the CEO role at Singapore-based Flex (No. 10 on the Fortune Southeast Asia 500), the company’s stock was trading at just under $7, its longtime CEO had recently been ousted, and the broader contract manufacturing industry lacked financial discipline.
Advaithi, who had only interacted with Flex as a supplier, wasn’t stepping into familiar terrain, but she didn’t overthink it. “It was a quant problem,” she says. “I thought I could double the stock. And if it doesn’t work in two years, I’ll go do something else.”
That kind of grounded pragmatism has defined her leadership philosophy for decades. No matter the role, she starts with a deceptively simple framework: Define the portfolio, clarify the value to customers, and understand why they’re willing to pay for it. “Strategy doesn’t need to be flashy,” she says. “Every job I’ve had, I’ve just focused on those two things.”
Her first year at Flex was spent putting that into practice. She told the board not to expect decisions until she had completed a full strategic review. Upon completion, the diagnosis was clear: The company needed to exit hyper-commoditized segments, such as smartphones and laptops, where pricing power was weak and volatility was high. Flex would instead double down on complex manufacturing for sectors like health care, industrials, and automotive—areas where execution mattered and margins could follow.
But even a disciplined plan was quickly stress-tested. Two months into Advaithi’s tenure, the U.S. government placed Huawei—then one of Flex’s largest customers—on the Entity List, forcing a rapid response across supply chains and customer relationships. Then came the pandemic and a global logistics crunch. Through it all, Advaithi says the basic playbook didn’t change. “Get your portfolio right. Make sure you can win for customers. Execute.”
That consistency extended to how Flex presented itself to investors. The company made a conscious shift away from chasing growth for its own sake and began emphasizing capital discipline, margins, and long-term resilience.
Advaithi’s path to Flex came after a moment of career inflection. While running North America for Eaton in 2015, she was asked to take over its global electrical business following leadership turnover. She accepted, but was open with the incoming CEO that he should feel free to choose his own team. “If a great CEO role comes your way,” he told her, “I won’t stop you.” She turned down another offer in the industrial sector before accepting Flex—a less regulated, more fragmented industry where she saw room to impose operational order.
One of her more prescient bets was the early decision to invest in the intersection of compute and power, well before the current AI boom. “Long before Nvidia and GPUs took off, I figured compute was going to become power-hungry,” she says. Flex began acquiring capabilities in power infrastructure for data centers.
Today, roughly a quarter of its business supports AI infrastructure, putting it in a differentiated position among contract manufacturers.
Ruth Umoh
ruth.umoh@fortune.com
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