Yvonne McGill is the first woman to become CFO of Dell Technologies

Yvonne McGill makes history at Dell Technologies. She is the first woman to become CFO of the tech giant.

Dell announced on Thursday during its fiscal 2023 fourth quarter earnings conference call that EVP and CFO Tom Sweet will be leaving the company. According to Dell, Sweet’s last day of work is August 4th. McGill, corporate controller since 2020, will then succeed him as chief financial officer.

Sweet joined Dell 26 years ago and held a number of leadership positions before becoming CFO in 2014, including VP of Corporate Finance, Controller, Head of Internal Audit and Chief Accounting Officer. He is the longest-serving CFO in the company’s history.

Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said on the conference call that Sweet has “steered the company through tremendous growth and through some extraordinary milestones, from merging with EMC to returning to the stock market and spinning off Dell’s stake in VMware.” . Dell thanked Sweet for his years of work and friendship.

McGill joined Dell in 1997. Her roles at the company included CFO and SVP of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, Chief Accounting Officer, and led the finance function for the Asia Pacific, Japan and China operations. Her first job at Dell was as Vice President of Finance. In McGill’s current role as Corporate Controller, her responsibilities include tax, treasury, accounting and investor relations.

“She is a proven finance leader and we are all very excited to have her as our next CFO,” Dell said on the conference call.

The company reported record full-year sales of $102.3 billion, up 1%. And $25 billion in revenue for the quarter ended February 3, down 11% year over year. But topped analysts’ estimates of $23.39 billion. Dell earned an adjusted $1.80 per share for the quarter, beating estimates. “The currency remained a headwind, impacting sales by about 410 basis points,” Sweet said on the earnings call.

The PC market slowed in June and experienced a sharp decline in the fourth quarter of the calendar, the company said. As a result, the customer service group’s revenue fell 23% to $13.4 billion. Infrastructure solutions, including storage, networking equipment, and servers, grew 7% year over year to $9.9 billion. Last month Dell announced that around 5% of the company’s workforce will be affected by the layoffs.

“Expect us to remain disciplined in how we run the business and the current macro environment and focused on what we can control and deliver to our clients,” Sweet said. “The amount and value of data continues to explode, and the long-term trends are in our favor,” Dell added.

McGill takes the helm at a time when the proportion of CFOs at large companies who are women is at an all-time high. As of 2022, women accounted for 16.3% of Fortune 500 and S&P 500 CFOs, based on an analysis of more than 650 C-suite executives by Crist Kolder Associates. That’s up from 6.3% in 2004, when the company started tracking the data.

There is still a long way to go in terms of women’s representation in finance leadership, but the industry is making some progress.

Have a good weekend. Watch after.

Sheryl Estrada
[email protected]

Big thing

Gallup examined various combinations of independent and collaborative work needs to determine how much office time versus remote time best supports employees. “Two to three days in the office yielded the best results for employee engagement and well-being, and reduced job hunting and burnout,” the report said. “There was no discernible pattern where days in the office led to positive outcomes, although people prefer to go to the office on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.”

go deeper

Here are a few Fortune weekend readings:

“Read two of the pitch decks that made Databricks one of the top 10 most valuable startups in the world” by Jessica Mathews

“Amazon employees can now use their shares as a down payment when buying a home” by Chloe Taylor

“Read the letter Lux Capital sent to its investors warning of ‘destructive consolidation in the venture industry'” by Anne Sraders

“Eli Lilly Limits Insulin Excess to $35 a Month, Bringing Relief to Millions of Americans” by Alexa Mikhail

leaderboard

Here’s a list of some notable moves this week:

Julia 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 served as the company’s acting CFO since November 2022. Previously, she worked at Intel for over 25 years, including as CFO of the cloud and enterprise data center business.

John Gallagher became CFO of Certara, Inc. (Nasdaq: CERT), a pharmaceutical company. Gallagher will succeed Andrew Schemick as CFO effective April 1. Schemick will transition to a newly created position as SVP, Corporate Operations and Integration. Gallagher was most recently CFO of Cue Health. Prior to Cue, he worked for Becton Dickinson where he held a variety of roles including CFO of the medical segment, chief accounting officer, corporate treasurer and FP&A leader.

Bill Waffle became CFO of Qurate Retail Group (Nasdaq: QRTEA), the parent company of brands such as QVC, HSN and Zulily. James Hathaway, who served as interim CFO since August 2022, will become CFO of QVC US. Wafford joins Qurate Retail Group from Everlane, where he was CFO. Prior to Everlane, he was CFO for retail companies including JCPenney, The Vitamin Shoppe and Thrasio.

Richard Kurz was promoted to CFO and secretary at Mercer International Inc. (Nasdaq: MERC). David Ure, CFO and Secretary since 2015, will leave the company on June 1st. Short was most recently vice president and controller of Mercer. Before that, he held various positions in the company from 2006 to 2014, including Director of Corporate Finance and Controller of Financial Reporting. Previously, Short served as Director of Corporate Finance at Catalyst Paper Corporation and Assistant Controller at The Alderwoods Group Inc.

Jon Skoglund became CFO at Axiad, a provider of passwordless authentication in the identity security space. Skoglund replaces Thomas Jahn as CFO, who is retiring. Skoglund has over 25 years of experience across multiple industries including CFO at ShareThis and Axcient. He has held various advanced finance positions at companies such as Intuitive Surgical, SGI, KPMG and National Semiconductor.

Alvin Lobo became CFO at Skillz (NYSE: SKLZ), a mobile gaming platform. Jason Roswig, who joined Skillz in August 2022 as President and CFO, will now serve as President. Lobo was formerly the CFO at Score Media and Gaming and oversaw all financial and accounting operations within the organization. Previously, Lobo was VP of Corporate Finance at Boyd Gaming Corporation and Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations at Wynn Resorts.

Kevin Coveney has been appointed CFO of Enveric Biosciences (Nasdaq: ENVB), a biotechnology company, effective March 13. Coveney joins Enveric after serving as part-CFO for 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. Prior to that, he was SVP of Finance, Human Resources and IT at Vedanta Biosciences.

overheard

“I don’t want to be the only blind female CEO in the UK, I want there to be tons of us. Blind and partially sighted people are just too far removed from the labor market – and when they are in the labor market they are not in managerial positions. It’s a pipeline issue. But I want to fix that.”

—Sandi Wassmer, CEO at Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion shared wealth the leadership lessons she learned when she lost her sight in her 40s.