Best Buy Chairman Hubert Joly has left the building -- or will do so soon.
In an 8-K filing with the SEC late Wednesday, electronics retail giant Best Buy (BBY -0.81%) advised that Hubert Joly, its former CEO and current executive chairman of the board, will retire from his current post on June 11, 2020. Taking his place as chairman of the board will be ex-Domino's Pizza CEO J. Patrick Doyle, now the lead independent director on Best Buy's board.
Image source: Best Buy.
Upon his retirement from the chairman's post, Joly will commence a "one-year renewable" independent contractor position as a consultant to the company providing "consulting services, advice on matters related to the business activities of the Company, and support to the Company's efforts to provide tech opportunities to disadvantaged youth." For these services he will be paid a fee of $150,000 per year.
Prior to moving to the executive chairman's post and ceding the CEO job to his successor Corie Barry, Joly served as CEO of Richfield, Minnesota-based Best Buy from 2012 to 2019. The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal credits Joly with "reviving a retailer that was once seen as a likely casualty of e-commerce competition like Amazon.com Inc."
Joly did this primarily by cutting costs and improving profitability. During his tenure, sales at Best Buy barely budged, rising less than 5% in seven years according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. And yet, he turned around the company regardless, taking Best Buy from a 2012 loss of more than $480 million a year, to a $1.5 billion profit in 2019, with $1.8 billion in annual free cash flow.
Best Buy stock closed down 6.8% in Wednesday trading.
