Kontoor Brands has elected Michael Skipworth and Jamie Caulfield to its board of directors with immediate effect, taking the board from seven members to nine.
Skipworth is President and Chief Executive Officer of Wingstop, the Dallas based operator and franchisor of more than three thousand restaurants worldwide. He joins Kontoor's Audit Committee and its Talent and Compensation Committee. Before taking the chief executive role he was President and Chief Operating Officer of the same business, and he came up through its finance, accounting and operations functions. Earlier in his career he held accounting, finance and operations roles at Cardinal Logistics Holdings and at KPMG. He is forty nine and holds a master of business administration from Midwestern State University.
Caulfield most recently served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of PepsiCo, a beverage and convenient foods group with net revenue of nearly ninety four billion dollars. He spent more than thirty years there in finance roles, including chief financial officer of PepsiCo Foods North America and head of investor relations for eight years from 2011. His experience covers financial planning and analysis, mergers and acquisitions and corporate strategy. He is sixty seven, holds an accounting degree from Loyola University and attended the Program for Management Development at Harvard Business School. He joins Kontoor's Audit Committee and its Nominating and Governance Committee.
Scott Baxter, Kontoor's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, said the company was excited to welcome both men. He said Caulfield brings decades of financial and portfolio leadership from one of the world's most respected consumer companies, and that Skipworth's proven track record scaling a high growth consumer brand would be equally valuable. Together, he said, their perspectives would help inform how the company manages its portfolio.
The composition of the two appointments is worth reading closely. Both new directors are placed on the Audit Committee, which is an unusual concentration and points to where the board believes it needs reinforcement. One is a career finance executive from a packaged goods group of considerable scale, the other a sitting chief executive of a franchised restaurant business. Kontoor owns the Wrangler and Lee denim brands and has been expanding beyond its core, so a board adding both balance sheet depth and live franchising and brand scaling experience is signalling the questions it expects to face.
The reference to portfolio management in the chairman's own words is the clearest signal in the announcement. Boards do not usually name the brief that publicly unless the work is already under way.
Kontoor is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The enlargement of the board from seven seats to nine, rather than a like for like replacement, indicates the company is adding capacity rather than managing a succession.
