Chris Catapano

DexKo Global is a $3B, vertically integrated manufacturer and distributor of engineered solutions for the towables industry, backed by Brookfield Business Partners. Promoted into Global holding company role in 2024 from previous role at Dexter Group.

Global FP&A

• Revamped Global Planning across all business units. Cut three weeks from 2026 budget cycle, reducing ELT time devoted to planning by over 50%. Developed succinct Budget Review Analytic that enabled the rapid and flexible evaluation of proposed plans from the grey floor to the C-Suite.
• Global Economic Strategy: Led global economic outlook, partnering with key commercial leaders to hone our intermediate and long term sales projection. Communicated key global market insights to Brookfield during our annual planning process and other key junctures throughout the fiscal year.
• Global Finance Transformation: Leading efforts to transform global planning & treasury operations, establishing a Center of Excellence in Europe, targeting $1.5M in annual savings.

Global Treasury

• Liquidity Management: Streamlined the daily management of approximately $400M of liquidity across three global cash concentrations and a host of international deposits, each with their unique set of funding needs. Daily optimization of prevailing ABL balance to reduce interest expense. Management of multiple interest rate swaps to minimize interest rate variability across global markets.
• Global 13-Week Liquidity Framework: Meaningfully enhanced existing 13-week liquidity framework by upgrading models, designing & executing training across 20 global businesses, and unifying multiple workstreams at the holding company level to deliver one unified liquidity outlook for our International business.
• 2024 Refinance: In partnership with Global CFO and Brookfield, led refinancing of DexKo Global's Revolver & ABL Facilities in 2024.

Global Data Analytics

• Global Standard Reporting: Designed & implemented standardized financial reporting across our global businesses, enabling operators and senior leaders to seamlessly evaluate business performance across key operating metrics. Reporting framework standardizes results across diverse operating models, global currencies, and removes price and tariff-driven distortion.
• Global Scorecard: Enhanced global scorecard reporting through the migration to PowerBI & development of tools designed for efficient performance analysis across entities & time. New diagnostic tools enable site operators and senior leaders to quickly identify and address performance gaps to EBITDA and Cash Flow.
• European & Pacific Market Analytics: Partnered with our International business to develop key performance dashboards, sales reporting & margin analysis across our diverse International businesses. Efforts surface a suite of powerful dashboards and analytical tools in PowerBI, combining data across multiple ERPs including SAP, Dynamics & Pronto.

Dexter Group, the largest business unit of DexKo Global, is a $2B vertically integrated manufacturer and distributor of axles, running gear, and a diversified portfolio of trailer parts. The Company operates 20 manufacturing sites and 60 distribution branches across the United States Canada & China. Dexter is a wholly owned subsidiary of DexKo Global, a $3B PE-backed investment of Brookfield Business Partners.

Data Analytics

• Azure Data Lake & Advanced Analytics Capabilities: Orchestrated the build-out of an Azure Data Lake and Analytics Service, integrating data across 14 ERPs spanning sales, procurement, inventory, and plant/branch operations.
• Master Data Management: Spearheaded organizational strategy around Master Data Management. Aligned & influenced strategy at DexKo to support MDM efforts required to support the new data environment. Led internal teams and engaged external consultants to unify data across 155k customers and 40k products spanning 14 ERPs.
• Business Intelligence: Led the development of a rich BI platform across the C-Suite, sales, operations, finance & HR. Relentlessly drove a BI development philosophy that delivered powerful interactive tools, derived from a single source of truth, enabling users to make informed, data driven decisions & dynamically explore the business.
• Financial Systems: Led the selection, design & implementation of OneStream as the platform for consolidations, budgeting & forecasting.

Financial Planning & Analysis

• Revenue Forecasting: Lead enterprise wide revenue forecasting, aligning macroeconomic outlook with market-based intelligence harnessed from our sales team and robust data analytics across 5 business units and 9 end markets.
• Budgeting & Forecasting: Lead enterprise wide budgeting and forecasting efforts, aligning the efforts of over 100 stakeholders to drive bottoms-up budgeting across 20 manufacturing sites & 60 distribution branches.
• Pricing: Developed enterprise-wide pricing analytics to measure pricing across over 100k SKUs and 100k customers. Developed business processes to regularly assess pricing strategies within the sales organization & C-Suite.
• Cash: Massively improved cash forecasting by developing models that contemplate daily sales & expense trends across a highly acquisitive business, significantly improving the ability to forecast working capital fluctuations & cash-from-ops.

Corporate Strategy

• Macroeconomic Analysis: Developed and led macroeconomic analysis across thirteen economic sectors, driving all revenue and demand planning efforts across the business. Lead coverage of metals, energy, diversified commodities, and key labor markets to improve forecasting efforts and effectively strategize how to achieve margin expansion in the face of depressed demand and/or rising input costs.
• Pricing: Spearheaded significant pricing efforts, aligning strategically significant prices across multiple ERPs in our highly acquisitive distribution business. Designed and implemented robust price tracking to secure compliance. Efforts lead to approx $6M of incremental EBITDA in 2023.
• M&A Integration: Harnessed data across 14 ERPs to enable a highly acquisitive manufacturer / distributor to manage its business through a unified set of KPIs. Rapidly integrated data from acquired companies into key operational reports & dashboards. Lead multiple projects to secure cost savings synergies surpassing $6M in 2023.
• M&A (Buyside): Lead the internal financial due diligence of TexTrail, a $500M distributor owned by one of the Company’s leading customers, American Trailer World. Advised senior leadership on key issues surrounding deal economics, TSA, and opportunities to generate EBITDA and cash flow synergies post-acquisition.
• M&A (Sell Side): Ran point on the most demanding stages of the Company’s due diligence in its 2021 sale to Brookfield Business Partners. Delivered robust product and customer-level analytics key to securing a successful sale. Developed a framework to quantify the Company’s long term commodity exposure across disparate ERPs and accounting systems.
• Restructuring: Lead internal efforts to identify and execute on strategic mandates to rationalize footprint, headcount & expense structure, driving the organization to deliver record EBITDA margin rates during a period of significantly depressed demand.

Investor Relations

• Lead BU relationship with Brookfield Business Partners: Regularly updating Brookfield on macroeconomic trends impacting the business, commodity market developments, and key initiatives driving margin expansion and enterprise value.
• Lead BU relationship with key fixed income investors: Periodically host lead fixed income investors to view operations, deepen their understanding of the business, and define a compelling investment thesis for DexKo bonds.

Fivestars provided loyalty, marketing, and payment processing services on a single SaaS platform for small businesses. Lead investors through Series D: Menlo Ventures, SALT Partners, DCM & Lightspeed Venture Partners. Fivestars was acquired by SumUp in October 2021 for $317M.

Financial Planning & Analysis

• SaaS Financial leader overseeing the Company’s fundraising, financial operations, forecasting, budgeting & reporting. Drove material increase in LTV and a significant reduced customer acquisition costs & cash burn.
• Fintech / Payments Planning & Development: Created financial and operating model used to develop and scale a new payment processing service for SMB’s.
• Developed Budgeting Process: Developed budget process across engineering, product, design, sales, marketing, operations, HR, recruiting, finance, facilities, supply chain & IT. Developed budget vs. actual framework to help department leads understand the financial implications of business decisions. Developed feedback loops, processes, and strategies to help the Company exceed Board guidance and internal goals across R&D, Sales, Marketing and G&A.
• Debt + Equity Fundraising: Spearheaded the development of a dynamic fundraising model to raise debt and equity financing. Defined financial plan to scale a new payments business at an attractive LTV / CAC. Efforts led to a $27M debit and equity capital raise and $10M debt financing in late 2019.

Business Improvement

• Slashed Customer Acquisition Costs: Developed a robust framework that analyzed customer acquisition costs across sales teams and marketing channel. Spearheaded the presentation of monthly results to board of directors. Efforts led to a 50% reduction in CAC, 12-month payback & 40% reduction in cash burn.
• Sales Compensation Plans Geared for Growth: In collaboration with the CEO & SVP of Sales, developed compensation plans for inside, outside, and enterprise sales teams. Developed compensation structures that attracted quality candidates & provided financial incentives to perform over the short and long term. Constructed commission plans that lowered customer acquisition costs, boosted customer LTV (by incentivizing lower churn) and accelerated sales growth.
• Sensible Recruiting Economics: Presided over a 50% reduction in spend across sales & technical recruiting. Established measurable and rigorous cost per hire goals to achieve robust, cost-effective growth.

Financial Operations

• Cut the Close from 15 to 5 Business Days: Developed processes to cut the close from fifteen to five business days. Instituted a soft close in 48hrs that enabled the reporting of “flash” revenue, GM & EBT to the CEO and Board within 1% of final results.
• Established Core Accounting Policies & Financial Operations: Developed the Company’s accounting policies and financial operations for Fivestars Pay. Separately led research and implementation of ASC 606.
• Audit Engagement Management: Served as the Company’s lead accounting & financial expert for the Deloitte engagement team. Key areas of focus included capitalized software, accruals, deferrals, inventory, going concern & internal controls. Efforts resulted in an unqualified audit opinion for all years under examination (2015-2018).
• Composed MD&A and Financial Footnotes: Provided senior oversight in the construction of the Company’s financial statements. Authored the Company’s MD&A and footnotes. Regularity consulted with the Deloitte engagement partner to resolve complex accounting and disclosure issues.

Bridgesphere provided management consulting & business intelligence solutions for emerging technology companies, law firms & SMB’s. Bridgesphere partnered closely with founders and C-Level executives to drive material improvements in growth, cash flow & enterprise value through planning and business intelligence, as well as fundraising, M&A, sensible growth & turnaround advisory services.

• Business Intelligence & Analytics: Leveraged data to generate robust models and reporting packages that enhanced business intelligence and visibility.
• Custom BI Tools for Law Firms: Developed law firm productivity and billing analytics for firms ranging from $2M in Revenue to AMLaw 100.
• Startup Advisory: Enabled founders to assess the economic veracity of their endeavors, determine the magnitude of outside investment needed to boost growth, and delineate how early-stage companies could become both profitable and cash accretive.
• M&A Advisory: Developed detailed valuations of target companies. Identified strategies to facilitate and finance proposed transactions.
• Marketing Attribution & ROI Improvement: Measured and improved the profitability of marketing efforts.
• SMB Advisory: Designed financial models, operational models, and strategic plans that significantly improved revenue and profit.
• Strategic-Financial Advisory for Law Firms: Developed strategic plans focused on financial performance, profits per partner, revenue growth, marketing ROI, and other key initiatives to improve recruiting, market share & business intelligence.
• Turnaround Advisory: Engineered turnaround plans that improved liquidity, revenue & net income.

• Led team of 15 equity research analysts providing in-depth analysis over the consumer, technology, industrial, energy, health care & financial sectors. Led analysis of IPOs and M&A transactions across all sectors.
• Pioneered a Proprietary Research Methodology: Led a team of equity research analysts, identifying emerging financial trends and strategic developments in publicly traded companies that would have a material impact on stock performance, innovation, and the competitive dynamics of industries.
• Investment Advisory: Consulted with leading hedge funds, mutual funds & sovereign wealth funds on investment strategy, stock selection, valuation, and trading strategies. Conducted in-depth research studies that resulted in a large institutional investor significantly altering its investment strategy in the consumer and technology sectors.
• M&A and IPOs: Designed the methodology upon which analysts would model and evaluate complex transactions, and their impact on a company’s financial statements, enterprise value, and stock performance. Representative transactions included IPO’s such as Google, Dicks Sporting Goods, Life Time Fitness, and Under Armour. Representative M&A transactions included Sears / Kmart, Federated Department Stores / May Department Stores, eBay / Skype, CVS / Caremark, and Pfizer / Pharmacia.
• Designed and Curated Equity Research Product: Developed content for hedge funds, mutual funds, sovereign wealth funds, and other institutional investors. Curated and managed the publication of our team’s insights to 3,000 leading institutional investors. Designed and implemented research studies that were developed at the behest of leading institutional investors such as JP Morgan, Fidelity, UBS, Alliance Capital Management, Putnam, and Citadel Investment Group.
• Product Development: Developed analytical tools enabling investors to forecast financial statements and value companies in all sectors of 30 financial markets in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. Algorithms and analytical tools were incorporated into a software platform used by leading financial institutions to quantify how forecasted changes to a company’s financial performance would impact the underlying value of the Company’s stock.
• Management Analytics & Reporting: Designed and implemented an analytics and reporting system that tracked the performance, profitability, and efficiency of approximately 50 global equity research analysts. Facilitated the attribution of over $100 Million in trading revenues to the global analyst team. Primary insights quantified the profitability of key clients, team members, and the impact of equity research to the investment bank’s P&L.

• Top performing senior associate with a diversified portfolio of public and private clients across the industrial and financial practice groups
• Performed interim and year-end audit procedures for public and private diversified industrial products companies.
• Delivered in-depth analyses, uncovering how non-cash items and discretionary transactions impacted reported earnings.
• Developed detailed analyses of client income statements and balance sheets, identifying accounts that appeared to fluctuate in a fashion that was inconsistent with the client’s consolidated financial performance or PwC’s fundamental analysis of the client.
• Designed and conducted specialized audit procedures to value and analyze transactions involving thinly traded financial instruments, complex investment contracts, and derivatives owned by mutual fund clients.