Todd Schull’s 35-year career as a top finance executive crisscrossed the nation.
He had a front-row seat during the Rust Belt’s decline in the early 1980s, when double-digit unemployment blanketed the Midwest.
He rode the dot.com wave and bust in Silicon Valley, gaining valuable insights in electronics manufacturing services and logistics, as well as startups and emerging technologies.
These days, he’s working on bolstering the financial muscle of TTM Technologies Inc. and closing a deal that would move it closer to the title of the world’s largest printed circuit board maker.
“We’ve been working really hard since I joined the company to try to move the finance model from an accounting organization to more of a business partner and higher value-added organization,” said Schull, the recipient of the Business Journal’s CFO of the Year Award for lifetime achievement (see other profiles, pages 1, 4, 6 and 8).
Since joining the Costa Mesa-based manufacturer in 2013, sales have doubled to $2.7 billion, and when its pending $775 million acquisition of East Syracuse-based Anaren Inc. clears in the next few months, it will inch closer to Tokyo-based Nippon Mektron Ltd. in sales for the No. 1 ranking on the global leader board.
The combined companies will have about $2.9 billion in annual revenue and operating income of about $450 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
The third-largest transaction in TTM’s nearly 20-year history will be financed through cash and an existing Term B loan.
Under the deal, TTM acquires key radio frequency components and subsystems for the aerospace and defense, and networking/communication markets, positioning it to benefit from projected increased spending in advanced radar technology and the ongoing development of 5G connectivity.
“We’re one of the most diversified companies in our industry,” Schull told the Business Journal last week on a call from the company’s Toronto plant, where it specializes in high-mix, low-volume production runs for the medical and industrial sectors, among others.
Stateside, it’s carved out steady business as the U.S. military’s largest PCB supplier. Its Santa Ana and Anaheim plants are among 12 operations in the U.S., each with its own specialization, technological focus or targeted end market. Quick turnarounds, prototype development and low-volume production runs on big-ticket items, such as John Deere tractors, are big drivers of its U.S. operation.
“We have the ability to support our customers across the life cycle of their products,” Schull said. “They get time to market advantages.”
Teamwork
Schull crossed several milestones during his TTM tenure, including the creation of share service centers and a global enterprise relationship management system. The company’s 2015 buy of Viasystems Group Inc. for $950 million, a game-changer that created an industry giant with about 30,000 employees and 28 plants in the U.S. and China, is a crowning achievement, but he doesn’t want to take the credit.
“There’s no such thing as an individual success story in a team sport,” said the South County resident. “We all win and lose together.”
Schull has found success at several stops throughout his career.
He helped Milpitas-based manufacturer Solectron Corp. grow from a $60 million company into a $2.5 billion enterprise during a nine-year run as vice president of finance.
In the heady days of December 1999 he helped take VA Linux public. The $132 million raised in the initial public offering was a side note, as its shares closed nearly 700% higher on its first trading day, shattering records along the way.
He spent eight years in a variety of finance roles at Sanmina Corp. before joining TTM, leading the San Jose-based company’s efforts to clean up its accounting records to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, and implementing a share service center initiative and tax strategy that saved the company $30 million annually.
Schull is big on community involvement, with more than a decade as a youth leader and committee member in the Boy Scouts of America. For 20 years he’s given up one week each summer to mentor and lead a camp for teenage girls, a service that’s particularly important to the father of three young women.
“That’s an area that needs a lot of attention,” he said. “That’s a tough time in a lot of kids’ lives.”
