Dive Brief:
- Sleep Number named Amy O’Keefe, a veteran finance leader who spent much of her career at The Black & Decker Corp, as its next CFO, effective Dec. 8, according to a release and securities filing Tuesday. O’Keefe’s resume also includes a range of finance roles, including serving as CFO of tech firms Avaya and WW.
- The smart mattress retailer said O’Keefe, 54, will replace interim CFO Bob Ryder, who will leave the company Dec. 12. A senior advisor at the Boston Consulting Group since 2015, Ryder has held the temporary position since July, after the company announced it would begin searching for a permanent successor to its outgoing CFO Francis Lee.
- The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company also reaffirmed its full-year 2025 financial guidance in the release, noting its turnaround plan is on track and highlighting “significant cost reductions” and other actions it has taken since April after its new CEO Linda Findley joined.
Dive Insight:
Sleep Number has been cutting costs and repositioning itself for over a year.
In the nine months ended Sept. 27, it incurred $47.5 million in restructuring costs. In its Q3 earnings report, the company stated that it expected about $3 million more of such costs in the remainder of this year, primarily due to severance, employee-related benefits, contract termination costs and asset impairment charges. The company in the trailing 12 months with the same end period also reported its net loss nearly doubled to $78.1 million from $40.8 million in the year-earlier period.
Findley in the company’s Nov. 5 earnings call said the company had faced some unanticipated headwinds, even as she was optimistic that the work to date positioned the company to execute the turnaround in 2026.
“As in many situations like this, there were more challenges than I expected, which required us to move extremely fast to fix the business,” Findley said, according to a transcript. “The pace of our work, along with constraints imposed by our capital structure, has made the first 6 months choppy.”
Since Findley joined, the company has reduced costs by more than $135 million excluding restructuring and other non-recurring costs, executed an amendment and an extension of its bank agreement through the end of 2027 and streamlined its operation, according to an investor presentation.
O’Keefe, with more than 30 years of experience in leading operational, strategic and financial transformations, said in a statement in the release that she was excited to join the company at such a “pivotal time.”
“With science-based sleep technology, highly differentiated products and broad brand recognition, Sleep Number has exceptional assets upon which to build,” O’Keefe said.
O’Keefe’s compensation package includes an annual base salary of $625,000 and a combination of long-term incentive inducement grant awards with a total value of $1.8 million to be granted on Dec. 15 and next year on March 15, subject to the terms of the company’s equity incentive plans, according to the SEC filing.
