#cfo

Word down at the watering hole is that CFOs fixin' mandate to take a mighty sharp kn--e to everything, and he ain't fixing to waste any time doing it, neither.

With so many executives leaving, it's hard not to wonder is Centene on its last legs, or is the company just going through a brutal restructuring?

Now we have a new CFO coming in from outside the healthcare industry. Will bringing in non-healthcare financial leadership turn the ship around, or will the steep learning curve just drive us further down?

Honest thoughts? Starting to get really worried about where we’re heading. :/

There have been a lot of comments about the CFO and CHRO of Phillips recently. I wanted to start a thread to consolidate views on these two as I have recently interviewed with both and considering a senior role at Phillips 66.

Can you help me by laying out your concerns as there are some pretty significant accusations on this board about both of them.

What should I be aware of as I would be working closely with both of them.

Nike ’s Free Cash Flow: A Key Warning Sign for Investors

Free Cash Flow (FCF) is one of the most important metrics I look at when analyzing a company because it shows how much cash remains after the business funds its capital expenditures.
For Nike, the recent trend deserves attention:

📊 Free Cash Flow
2023: $4.87B
2024: $6.62B
2025: $3.27B
2026: $2.18B

The numbers tell an important story.
Nike reached a strong $6.62 billion in FCF in 2024, but since then, FCF has fallen sharply to $2.18 billion in 2026.

That represents a decline of approximately 67% from the 2024 peak.
The key question for investors is not simply whether Nike still generates positive FCF, it does.

The more important question is:
Why is Nike generating significantly less cash from its operations?

Because capital expenditures have remained relatively controlled, the deterioration in FCF appears to be driven primarily by the decline in Operating Cash Flow.

This is something I would investigate further through:

• Revenue growth
• Operating margins
• Inventory levels
• Accounts receivable
• Working capital
• Debt
• Earnings quality
• Cash conversion
  A company can remain profitable while its cash generation deteriorates. That is why Free Cash Flow is such an important part of fundamental analysis.
  For investors, the next step is understanding whether this decline is temporary or structural.
  That distinction can significantly change the investment thesis.

Our SLT is just so damn good at mandating the people who ACTUALLY DO THE WORK attend repetitive meetings. Apparently it's not enough to have the CEO, CFO, HR head, various EVPs pat themselves on the back for all of the wonderful things they do to make our lives easier (yes, this is sarcasm), they need to take turns leading meetings several times a month to repeat the same delusional cr-p. I just can't do this anymore. This company is so absurd.

DD came on board 8/16 and I noticed that in addition to CFO, he also has listed Interim Corporate Controller per Nike's stock page on CNBC. Were there some org moves prior to his arrival or is he making changes from day 1?

The F*** CFO is now holding 20K shares in this company, that is $3M. He has no skin in the game anymore and he does not care. His insider trading pattern shows that he has no confidence in the business. For a company of that size and this behavior of CFO, he has to be immediately replaced.
Typically CFOs hold millions or hundreds of millions in their companies stock.
He is a mo--n that ran the company downhill with teh CEO. Fire both !

CenTeam,

After a career defined by remarkable leadership and an unwavering dedication to transforming healthcare in our country, Drew Asher has announced his intention to step down from the CFO position on December 31st and retire from Centene at the end of 2027. Drew has been an incredible CFO and a true partner to me in the leadership of this extraordinary company. He has also served as a mentor, friend and role model to countless members of the CenTeam.

As we look ahead, I’m excited to share that Chris Neczypor will join us in September and will become Centene’s next CFO on January 1st. Chris joins us from Lincoln Financial where he served as CFO and also led strategy and enterprise transformation. Beyond his robust financial experience, Chris embodies our One CenTeam culture. He is a collaborative leader who is deeply committed to helping us simplify healthcare and transform the health of the communities we serve. Native to the Philadelphia area, Chris is a die-hard Eagles fan who loves spending time with his family and three dogs.

Over the coming months, Chris, Drew and I will partner on a thoughtful transition, ensuring we are well prepared to step into Centene’s next chapter. We look forward to giving Chris a warm welcome when he begins with the company next month. In the meantime, I’d ask that you join me in thanking Drew for all he has done and will continue to do for Centene. I look forward to celebrating his remarkable career and legacy when he retires late next year.

steps down as CFO 12/31/26, retires end of 2027.

Will the CFO continue to push the strategy of 'grow the bottom line faster than the top line' in FY27?

Why did the CFO depart abruptly?

Behind all of this?
Seems since he took his recent post that’s when our RTO accelerated.
He’s making a name for himself to take the Abby slot
Never good when family owned CEO leaves any company.
There goes the legacy and the loyalty.
This guy to me is the reason behind all this upheaval.
Company’s with bean counters at the helm don’t bite employees as integral and valuable.
They are deficits.
Just one gals opinion. But I have seen this before in other companies way too often.

Why did the stock tank after earnings? Is this the Kubasik effect or the new CFO or both?

It was one year ago that our ceo decided to file a lawsuit against the former company President, CFO & Chief Sales Officer>After 1 yr & $1M in legal fees spent on both sides, the case is heading towards depositions>The only evidence that the defense has produced is a screenshot of a Efast 5500 page>They have deleted texts, spoiled evidence, & there about 10 MoA employees who could be deposed to testify against them. Deck is stacked>They want to settle but MoA wont give a # + I say this settles for $1.5+legal fees split + Non Compete for 10 yrs. Enough to effectively lock them out. there are more cards to play like complaints to Finra, Sec, NYDFs. stay tuned & grab your popcorn. The second act begins in 10 minutes 🎥🎞️🍿

Here are your top 5 priorities and areas to go look at looking at the next 10 years…. you’re welcome. Lotsa kool aid drinker will tell you how great we are and Nike magic and all that BS but the numbers are the numbers as you know.

1. Revenue is up 43%, but net income is down 17%. More sales, less profit. Not exactly the dream.
2. Operating margin fell from roughly 14% to 8.2%. Nike is working a lot harder for every dollar it keeps.
3. Free cash flow dropped from $6.6B to $2.2B in two years. That limits everything from innovation to buybacks.
4. Nike spent roughly $35B on buybacks, yet EPS barely moved from $2.16 to $2.10 over the decade. Fewer shares helped, but weaker earnings ate the benefit.
5. Investor credibility needs rebuilding. The market does not need another turnaround story. It needs proof through margins, cash flow, and EPS growth.

Thanks Dave,

Concerned former shareholder waiting for confidence to buy again.

Seeing the Iraq pics on Campus, it looks like Dan Amman will become CEO soon (2026, maybe 2027 latest). His presence was definitely noticeable. And reading his background, he seems next for the CEO job.
Does that mean DW is done soon? With Dan’s financial background, he’ll want an industry leading CFO, not Neil, so maybe finance org will get some relief too. Change is coming!

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/4757276/Profile-Dan-Ammann

And OpenAI has a TRILLION dollars of promised spend with various hyperscalers, Oracle being one of the biggest. This doesn't bode well for AI in general as it's an admission that it's just not that useful, we are NOT "curing cancer" and likely never will.

Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora warned that token costs need to drop as much as 90% to promote large-scale artificial intelligence adoption.

“I think 54% is a good start,” Arora told CNBC’s Seema Mody on “Squawk on the Street” on Thursday, after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told CNBC that the frontier lab’s latest model is 54% more token-efficient for agentic coding. “I think we probably need another turn at it.”

Arora said token efficiency needs to drop to as much as 20% over the next 12 months, and 90% by the following year.

It has come to light that she had a business email address for a competitor of mutual of america while she was employed by mutual of america allegedly aiding & abetting competitors & feeding them inside secrets$Discovery is going on now & depositions are by the end of the year$both sides will plead the 5th & this one ends in a stale mate+$2M in legal fees blown out the window$$$

Hired to control costs and recover margins for Nike. You all know what that means, right?

CEO Stephenson said the stock was going to $50/share
CFO Stevens said it was a good thing AT&T was kicked off the DOW and replaced by Apple
COO Stankey did that hilarious/mocking impression of Trump right before the 2016 election - then Trump got elected and when had to spend an extra $550M in legal expenses to get the Time Warner deal done
COO Donovan (claiming to be a good Irish Catholic boy) got caught sniffing Arnoldi's drawers.
Never the A-Team of C-Suite America.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320187/000032018726000070/nke-20260616.htm

This is NEVER a good sign for a company that is doing as poorly as T. Look at the history of what happens after a CFO leaves a burning building. Getting bounced right now so you can quickly liquidate you pension would be a blessing.

Have you guys looked at his history past where he’s worked? Do a quick ChatGPT/Gemini search on his roles at his previous corps. People talking about PE in the other thread. No need. This guy will do the same they’d do, without selling out. His specialty is corporate restructuring and cost efficiency. Get ready everyone. They didn’t bring in an outsider for nothing. I bet you MF was unwilling to do what EH and the board wants. I think they see that EH approval rating is declining, so bring in someone else to be the bad guy. Homeboy doesn’t care. He’s probably on his way out of his career.

The last domino left has fallen. Anyone left that EH hasn't shown the door?

Zero logic internallyI Numbers reported are fraudulent. CFO just resigned. Same as MCI / WorldCom demise. Stink driving this company into bankruptcy faster than he will be able to complete his ridiculous HQ homage. MBA programs already cite him as the worst CEO in history!

Pascal is off the payroll on Jan 1 2027 and received a 6 months notice whereas those who got surplussed today received a 2 weeks notice.

The 6 months is to complete knowledge transfer and to train the incoming CFO Jennifer Biry. Pascal’s annual compensation is approximately $12 million which means he will make $6 million before being off the payroll and heading off to the Bahamas for the rest of his life.

If they wanted any level of respectable fairness he would have the same notice period as everyone else but these executives treat their job as a full time guaranteed vacation.

One Meta worker interrupted a livestreamed presentation to thousands of colleagues, blasting the company over an open mic and demanding the call's leaders pass along a personal message to a Meta AI executive: "Tell him that he's a piece of s---," according to a recording reviewed by WIRED.

https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-meta-employee-meeting-interrupt-ai/

In that spirit:

Tell Chuck and the new bonus seeking CFO that they are pieces of s---.

According to reporting today, Centene offered voluntary buyouts to most employees and indicated layoffs could follow if enough employees don't accept. CEO Sarah London told employees, "When our membership shifts, we need to shift our organization accordingly." The company reportedly had about 61,000 employees in Q1 2026. (Bloomberg Law)

## Updated Timeline

### Phase 1: 2022–2024

New leadership takes over.

Board thesis:

• Modernize Centene
• Become more technology-driven
• Improve member outcomes
• Diversify beyond traditional Medicaid dependence

At this point, the strategy was defensible.

### Phase 2: 2024–2025

Warning signs emerge.

Management faced:

• Medicaid redeterminations
• Rising utilization
• ACA Marketplace volatility
• Expiring enhanced subsidies

This is where forecasting and scenario planning become critical.

### Phase 3: 2025–2026

The strategy begins unraveling.

What happened:

Membership

• Medicaid enrollment declines.
• ACA Marketplace enrollment drops far more than originally anticipated after subsidy changes and premium increases. Centene expected ACA membership to fall from roughly 5.5 million to about 3.5 million after repricing. (Healthcare Dive)

Financials

• Massive earnings deterioration.
• Guidance credibility damaged.
• Investor confidence weakened. (Healthcare Dive)

Organization

• Executive restructuring announced in April 2026. (Investor Relations | Centene Corporation)
• Now voluntary buyouts and potential layoffs announced in June 2026. (Bloomberg Law)

# The New Insight

The buyout program is not the problem.

It is evidence of the problem.

When a payer begins broad voluntary separation programs after:

• Membership losses
• Earnings deterioration
• Multiple prior layoffs
• Organizational restructuring

it usually means management now believes the revenue base has permanently reset lower than previously expected. (Bloomberg Law)

In other words:

They are no longer planning for a temporary disruption.

They are resizing the company for a smaller future membership base.

That is a much more significant signal than the layoffs themselves.

# What This Says About Leadership

My view now:

## CFO Accountability: 40%

The CFO owns:

• Forecasting
• Scenario modeling
• Guidance
• Financial planning

The Marketplace membership collapse should have been modeled more aggressively.

Questions a board should ask:

• What was the expected subsidy expiration impact?
• What was the worst-case scenario?
• Why were forecasts so far off?
• Why did guidance have to be revised?

Those are CFO questions.

## CEO Accountability: 60%

The CEO owns:

### Strategic Direction

The critical decision wasn't the forecast.

The critical decision was:

"Marketplace will offset Medicaid losses."

That appears increasingly incorrect.

The company effectively:

• Lost Medicaid members
• Lost Marketplace members
• Lost operating leverage

And now must shrink the workforce to match the new reality. (Bloomberg Law)

That's fundamentally a strategic issue.

# What Would a Board Likely Do?

If I were sitting on the board today, I would ask:

### Question 1

Was this primarily:

• a forecasting failure?

or

• a strategy failure?

The answer determines who goes.

### If Forecasting Failed

Replace:

• CFO
• Chief Actuary
• Finance leadership

Retain CEO.

### If Strategy Failed

Replace:

• CEO

Possibly retain CFO if forecasts reflected the risks and leadership ignored them.

# My Assessment Today

With everything now known:

1. Medicaid losses
2. Marketplace losses
3. Subsidy expiration effects
4. Pricing issues
5. Guidance issues
6. Workforce reductions
7. Voluntary buyouts

I no longer see this as primarily a finance problem.

I see it as a strategy and execution problem.

The workforce reduction announcement is especially important because it demonstrates leadership is now reacting to membership losses rather than benefiting from a growth strategy. (Bloomberg Law)

# If This Were My Board Recommendation

Near term (next 6 months)

• Replace or restructure portions of Finance and Actuarial leadership.
• Bring in an external operating advisor with deep Medicaid and payer turnaround experience.
• Require a comprehensive membership recovery and profitability plan.

Medium term (next 12 months)

If:

• Membership stabilizes,
• Margins recover,
• Workforce reductions achieve targets,

then the CEO survives.

If:

• ACA membership continues declining,
• Medicaid pressure persists,
• Another major earnings miss occurs,

then I would expect the board to seriously evaluate replacing the CEO.

## Final Assessment

Looking at Centene from before Sarah through today, the company appears to have moved from a highly disciplined Medicaid operator under Michael Neidorff to a company attempting a broader transformation under Sarah London. The challenge is that the transformation coincided with one of the most difficult payer environments in decades. The latest buyout program is a strong signal that leadership now believes the enrollment and revenue outlook is materially lower than previously expected, forcing the organization into another round of cost reductions. Based on the information available today, I would assign greater accountability to the CEO than the CFO because the root issue appears to be strategic positioning and market assumptions, not simply financial forecasting. (Bloomberg Law)

AI agent to take over CFO role nd HR head roles

Does Meg install a new CFO sooner than later?

Ever since he got a promotion to Executive Vice President, he has withdrawn. Not as prominent. He looks over the CFO's shoulder constantly. He is under qualified and out of his league. He enjoys slashing revenue on plan pricing and can't seem to make up for it in any additional revenue. By the way, how is that Hedge Fund working out and when is the Firm going to become fully transparent with its performance and holdings ?

Amazing the negativity seen in this Heartbeat article. Employees not happy with 100B in revenue and not cost of living increase.

Not saying she is, but if she is found to be partaking in Insider Trading, report at once to the SEC!

https://www.stocktitan.net/sec-filings/HUM/form-4-humana-inc-insider-trading-activity-bf89f440dd06.html

Only then there is stock price maxxing

CFO got a $26 million bonus after layoffs. Doesn't that negate the loss of a whole bunch of jobs?

After the net debt fiasco, the CFO is next to be jettisoned. To be replaced with someone better equipped to manage the balance sheet. I imagine the search has already been in progress.

Can only imagine the BOD/Vz C-Level circlej--kgoing on before Q1 reporting!

CFO has to be using AI to put lipstick on this Pig!

Anyone know why Tom Liguori was replaced as CFO all of a sudden?

HS gets booted as CFO and no comments? What's going on?