When the TreeHouse Foods financial planning and analysis (FP&A) team notice CFO Bill Kelley entering the room, chances are that a number of team members shoot a quick glance at the company’s latest revenue figures.
“I’m probably more predictable than I want to be,” explains Kelley, who has made revenue management a top priority for the $4.5 billion private label food and beverage maker.
The push for organic growth at TreeHouse follows a larger reorganization at the company that roughly coincided with Kelley’s arrival inside the CFO office. According to Kelley, that reorg has since led finance to begin embedding senior finance executives inside different business lines.
Read More“There are finance people who are now hard-wired into the business units, and we have created a revenue management function that had not previously existed,” points out Kelley, who notes that the embedded finance professionals are today playing a more strategic role inside the business than ever before.
“They are the copilot or the chief of staff to the business unit presidents, whom they help to make decisions on how to allocate capital and how to grow the organization,” explains Kelley, who adds that the central finance function remains responsible for the training and development of all finance professionals.
Meanwhile, Kelley says, in addition to helping to drive organic growth, finance helps the company to flex its working capital muscles.
“Our investment thesis about which we talk to investors is that we have a unique ability to generate an outsized amount of cash flow,” reports Kelley. “We are committed to driving free cash flow in excess of $300 million annually, and we want to grow our EPS 10% a year.” –Jack Sweeney
Made Possible By
CFOTL: Tell us about TreeHouse Foods—what sets it apart from its competitors?
Kelley: At TreeHouse, we are the leading private label food and beverage maker in North America. We had revenue last year of approximately $4.5 billion across 29 categories, including pasta, single-serve coffee, cookies, and crackers, just to name a few. We like to describe ourselves as the supply chain partner of choice that enables our customers’ private label strategies. We offer customers scale and deep knowledge and expertise across categories, and we help them to solve their product offering and assortment needs through customization and innovation. We have a performance-based culture at TreeHouse, in which we live our values every day with our employees and our customers and in our communities. We focus a lot here on people, development, and talent, as well as on growing careers across the finance and accounting space as well as other functions.
Read More
Made Possible By
Made Possible By
TreeHouse is a large organization. We have more than 10,000 team members across 40 plants in the United States, Canada, and Italy, where we have two sites. At TreeHouse, my priority is to partner with our leadership team and CEO to deliver a top-line organic growth of 1% to 2%, which is what we’ve committed to and what we want to focus on. We also are committed to driving free cash flow in excess of $300 million annually, and we want to grow our EPS 10% a year. In the next 12 months, we will continue to execute our strategy and focus on categories to really drive this organic growth. Last and certainly not least, I have an amazing set of teammates and colleagues with me, and supporting them in their careers is always top-of-mind. All of this is wrapped around the ability to keep everyone safe and healthy and to make sure that we can finally finish up this pandemic in a strong way.
jb
TreeHouse Foods | www.treehousefoods.com | Oak Brook, Illinois