Yvonne McGill is making history at Dell Technologies. Shes the first woman to become CFO of the tech giant.
Dell announced during its Q4 fiscal 2023 earnings call on Thursday that EVP and CFO Tom Sweet will retire from the company. Sweets last day is on Aug. 4, according to Dell. McGill, corporate controller since 2020, will then succeed him as finance chief.
Sweet joined Dell 26 years ago and held several leadership positions before becoming CFO in 2014, including VP of corporate finance, controller, head of internal audit, and chief accounting officer. Hes the longest-serving CFO in the companys history.
Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said on the call that Sweet has guided the company through tremendous growth and through some extraordinary milestones, from the merger with EMC to returning to the public markets to spinning off Dells stake in VMware. Dell thanked Sweet for his work over the years, and his friendship.
McGill joined Dell in 1997. Her roles at the company included CFO and SVP of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, chief accounting officer, and she led the finance function for the Asia-Pacific, Japan, and China business. Her first job at Dell was as vice president of finance. In McGills current role as corporate controller, her responsibilities include tax, treasury, accounting, and investor relations.
She is a proven finance leader, and we are all thrilled to have her as our next CFO, Dell said on the call.
The company reported record full-year revenue of $102.3 billion, up 1%. And $25 billion in revenue in the quarter ending Feb. 3, down 11% from the year prior. But exceeded analysts estimates of $23.39 billion. Dell earned an adjusted $1.80 a share for the quarter, beating estimates. Currency remained a headwind and impacted revenue by approximately 410 basis points, Sweet said on the call.
The personal computer market slowed in June, and experienced a sharp decline in calendar Q4, the company said. As a result, its client services group revenue declined 23% to $13.4 billion. Infrastructure solutions, including storage, networking gear, and servers, increased 7% from the prior year to $9.9 billion. Last month, Dell announced around 5% of the companys workforce will be impacted by the layoffs.
Expect us to continue to be disciplined in how we manage the business and the current macroenvironment, focusing on what we can control and delivering for our customers, Sweet said. The quantity and value of data continue to explode, and the long-term trends are in our favor, Dell added.
McGill takes the helm at a time when the percentage of CFOs at major companies who are women hit an all-time high. In 2022, women made up 16.3% of CFOs at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies, based on an analysis of more than 650 C-suite executives by the firm Crist Kolder Associates. Thats an increase from 6.3% back in 2004, when the firm began tracking the data.
Theres still a long way to go regarding the representation of women in financial leadership, but the industry is making some strides.
Have a good weekend. Take care.
Sheryl Estrada
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Big deal
Gallup examined various combinations of independent and collaborative working requirements to find out the amount of office versus remote time that best supported employees. "Two to three days in the office resulted in the best outcomes for employee engagement and wellbeing and reduced job hunting and burnout," according to the report. "There was no discernable pattern for which days in the office led to positive outcomes, although people tend to favor going to the office on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday."
Going deeper
Here are a few Fortune weekend reads:
"Read two of the pitch decks Databricks used to become one of the worlds 10 most valuable startups" by Jessica Mathews
"Amazon staff can now use their stock as down payments when they buy a home" by Chloe Taylor
"Read the letter Lux Capital sent to its investors warning of crushing consolidation in the venture industry" by Anne Sraders
"Eli Lilly caps the out-of-pocket cost of insulin at $35 a month, bringing relief to millions of Americans" by Alexa Mikhail
Leaderboard
Here's a list of some notable moves this week:
Julie Swinney was promoted to CFO at Zendesk, a customer service platform. Swinney joined Zendesk in October 2021 as SVP of finance and strategy and has been serving as the companys acting CFO since November 2022. She was previously at Intel for over 25 years, including serving as CFO of the cloud and enterprise data center business.
John Gallagher was named CFO at Certara, Inc. (Nasdaq: CERT), a pharmaceutical company. Gallagher will succeed Andrew Schemick as CFO, effective April 1. Schemick will transition into a newly created position as SVP of corporate operations and integration. Gallagher most recently served as the CFO of Cue Health. Before Cue, he worked for Becton Dickinson, where he served in multiple roles, including CFO of its Medical Segment, chief accounting officer, corporate treasurer, and FP&A Leader.
Bill Wafford was named CFO at Qurate Retail Group (Nasdaq: QRTEA), the parent company of brands including QVC, HSN, and Zulily. James Hathaway, who had been serving as Interim CFO since August 2022, will become the CFO of QVC US. Wafford joins Qurate Retail Group from Everlane, where he was the CFO. Before Everlane, he served as CFO for retail companies such as JCPenney, The Vitamin Shoppe, and Thrasio.
Richard Short was promoted to CFO and secretary at Mercer International Inc. (Nasdaq: MERC). David Ure, CFO and secretary since 2015, will be leaving the company effective June 1. Short most recently served as Mercer's VP and controller. Before that, from 2006 to 2014, he served in several positions with the company, including as director of corporate finance and controller of financial reporting. Previously, Short served as director of corporate finance with Catalyst Paper Corporation, and assistant controller at The Alderwoods Group Inc.
Jon Skoglund was named CFO at Axiad, a provider of passwordless authentification in the identity security space. Skoglund replaces Thomas Jahn as CFO, who is retiring. Skoglund has more than 25 years of experience across various industries, including serving as CFO at ShareThis and Axcient. He held various progressive financial positions at companies such as Intuitive Surgical, SGI, KPMG, and National Semiconductor.
Alvin Lobo was named CFO at Skillz (NYSE: SKLZ), a mobile games platform. Jason Roswig, who joined Skillz in August 2022 as president and CFO, will now serve as president. Formerly CFO at Score Media and Gaming, Lobo oversaw all financial and accounting operations within the organization. Before that, Lobo served as VP of corporate finance for Boyd Gaming Corporation, and as director of corporate finance and investor relations for Wynn Resorts.
Kevin Coveney was named CFO at Enveric Biosciences (Nasdaq: ENVB), a biotechnology company, effective March 13. Coveney joins Enveric after serving as a fractional CFO to emerging life science and digital health companies, such as Progressive Therapeutics, Power of Patients, and VSI. Previously, Coveney was CFO of Memgen, Inc., and CFO of Q-State Biosciences. Before that, he was SVP of finance, HR, and IT at Vedanta Biosciences.
Overheard
I dont want to be the only blind female CEO in the U.K., I want there to be tons of us. Blind and partially sighted people are just too far from the labor marketand if theyre in the labor market, theyre not in senior jobs. Its a pipeline issue. But I want to fix that.
Sandi Wassmer, CEO at Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion, shared with Fortune the leadership lessons she learned from losing her sight in her 40s.
