Dive Brief:

• E-commerce seller CarParts.com named its CFO-COO David Meniane to replace outgoing CEO Lev Peker and promoted Senior Vice President of Finance Ryan Lockwood to CFO. Peker is stepping down April 15 to pursue other business opportunities.

• As CEO Meniane, CFO since March 2019, will receive an annual base salary of $609,000 and be granted $1.9 million in restricted stock units with vesting schedules, according to an SEC filing. He will also be eligible to receive an annual target incentive bonus of up to 100% of his salary. 

• Lockwood, SVP since June 2020, will receive an annual base salary of $400,000 in his new role, be eligible for an annual target bonus of up to 50% of his salary and be granted $974,000 in restricted stock units, also with vesting schedules. 

Dive Insight:

The leadership move is one of the latest to underscore the accelerating CFO-to-CEO path. The percentage of sitting CEOs at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies coming from internal or external CFO positions ticked up to a 10-year high of 7.9% last year from 6.6% in 2020, according to a Crist|Kolder Associates report.   

Internal picks for the C-suite typically signal that a company is staying its strategic course and the company signaled as much in a statement saying its mission “remains the same” despite the shift in leadership. 

A big e-commerce seller of gaskets, brakes and other products to consumers for do-it-yourself repairs, CarParts.com has undergone an “aggressive turnaround journey” that has resulted in growth across its business, Meniane said in a statement. He was credited by the company with building a vertically integrated supply chain and the company’s data science team. 

Meniane is also one of an increasing number of financial executives bulking up inventory and pushing back on the long-time trend toward just-in-time lean inventory management.

“In this environment [just-in-time] doesn’t work. The longer the lead time, the less reliable the supply chain, the more inventory you have to carry, ” he recently told CFO Dive. Otherwise “we lose the sale to whoever has inventory and is more aggressive.”

Lockwood in an email said the company would continue on its inventory course. 

“With over 300,000 square feet of warehouse space coming online over the next two quarters, a record amount of inventory to support our growth, significant improvements in sales, relentless focus on customer experience, and the most hard working and resilient team, we are in a strong position to continue servicing our customers and getting them back on the road,” Lockwood wrote. “Being vertically integrated puts us at a significant competitive advantage over competitors who only drop ship and do not have control over their supply chain or inventory.”

Lockwood also said one of the new leadership's priorities is to become a one-stop-shop for customers needing vehicle repairs. Over the past several quarters he said it has been testing various "Do-It-For-Me" initiatives that help customers find mechanics to do their repairs rather than doing it themselves. 

 As SVP Lockwood focused on the company’s corporate finance and capital structure, was the main point of contact for institutional shareholders, investment banking partners and analysts and managed new leases, renewals and real estate transactions, according to his LinkedIn account. Prior to joining the company, he was a portfolio manager and head of fixed income at the Private Management Group which had about $3 billion in assets under management.