The finance team of Emerald Expositions Events Inc. (NYSE: EEX), the $1 billion-valued San Juan Capistrano-based owner and operator of trade shows, events and conferences, have been a shining star the past few years.
Its ranks counts a rising star, too. Senior Vice President of Finance David Sunderland received the Business Journal’s CFO of the Year award for rising star on Jan. 31 at Hotel Irvine (see profiles, pages 1, 4, 6 and 8).
“Emerald has been quite a journey,” Sunderland said during the ceremony.
“In five years, we’ve done a lot. We did 17 acquisitions and went public after a spinoff from a private equity firm and had to do everything from scratch.”
Through those years, Sunderland said his team and the company’s management, notably interim Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer Philip Evans, is what pushed him to be better.
“To me, you can put in a system, analyze balance sheets and income statements, but leadership is really where it’s at and every day I try to become a better leader, a better mentor,” he said.
Emerald is the largest operator of business-to-business trade shows held in the U.S.
It has about 55 trade shows under its belt, including the Swim Collective and Active Collective shows held at the Anaheim Convention Center.
More than 500,000 people attended Emerald’s shows in 2017, and those events took up nearly 7 million square feet of exhibition space at convention centers at hotel meeting spaces across the country, according to the company’s latest annual report.
Sunderland joined the company in 2014 as vice president of financial planning and analysis, where he led the spinoff from Emerald’s former owner, Toronto-based private equity firm Onex Corp.
He then set up a new financial planning system and back-end analytical platform while supporting the company’s strategy and processes leading to its IPO in 2017, when it raised nearly $265 million.
Carving out Emerald into a separate entity from Onex was one of many memorable experiences, Sunderland said.
“To have the opportunity to set the vision and path and get the support from the CFO to say this is how I think we need to do things and the process—that was really cool,” he said.
However, his favorite moment—captured in a photo hanging in his office—is standing at the podium of the New York Stock Exchange with his colleagues ringing the opening bell after the 2017 IPO, one of the largest in Orange County the past five years.
Emerald has continued to keep Sunderland busy, particularly through an active acquisition push.
It spent about $73 million on deals last year, bringing its total to more than $600 million spent on acquisitions since 2014.
Evans, who was named interim chief executive after David Loechner announced his resignation in November, told the Business Journal at the time that its acquisition strategy is “part of our growth thesis” and “the best thing for our shareholders.”
