Kenji Nightingale, MBA

• Intel Corporation ($38B global semiconductor manufacturer)
• Warner Bros. Discovery ($34B premier global media & entertainment company)
• AT&T – DIRECTV ($33B satellite television service provider of a global entertainment and communications company)
• Culligan International ($1.4B global water treatment company)
• Deluxe Entertainment ($1B global film/TV/advertising post-production company)
• OpenX (privately held programmatic advertising technology company)
• We’re Not Really Strangers (privately held e-commerce card game company)
• Beautycon Media (privately held convention, e-commerce, and content production beauty and lifestyle company)
• FanDragon Technologies (privately held blockchain-based wallet-enabled digital ticketing delivery company)

• Extensive experience at the corporate and divisional levels at numerous companies across a wide range of industries in all areas of financial planning and analysis, including preparation of long-range strategic plans, competitive market analyses, annual operating plans, quarterly forecasts, CAPEX budgeting, OPEX planning, revenue flashes, royalties’ analyses, KPI reporting, and ad hoc analyses. Work also encompasses providing detailed competitor, industry landscape, and market penetration opportunity analyses.
• Interacted extensively with C-suite and operational leadership to develop, review, analyze, and present strategic plans, operational assessments, and financial and deal evaluations. Explained major variances and recommendations for corrective actions to support organizational goals. Served as a key divisional intermediary between corporate and over 30 studios across 5 countries at large global entertainment company.
• Developed financial guidance leading to the attainment of top-line revenue, EBITDA, working capital, and free cash flow goals through evaluating and projecting new business, organic growth, and new operational efficiencies.
• Developed transformative business plans, including launching OTT services with projected incremental gross revenues in excess of $13B over 10 years, B2B vertical expansion, and growing international package offerings, for a Fortune 100 entertainment and technology company. Assisted in negotiating television content licensing agreements to optimize margins by developing pro forma scenarios.
• Created plans for the successful development and release of new direct-to-consumer game products which outlined geographic and SKU market penetration opportunities, product pricing scenarios, and comparison of 3rd party manufacturers and distribution channels for a growing e-commerce company. Evaluated the contribution margins of the online direct-to-consumer, FBA, and Wholesale sales channels and advised on the best courses of action to allocate resources for $4M+/year of inventory. Calculated 3PL and other operational improvement opportunities to expand the e-commerce direct-to-consumer gross margins of ~45% and reduce $5M+ of fulfillment and shipping expenses.
• Bolstered growth in multiple SaaS-based companies by providing useful insights through informative SaaS KPIs such as average subs, churn, MRR, ARPU, ACPU, CAC, LTV, CSAT, etc.
• Financially managed multiple verticals/divisions at startup to increase revenue by 2x and gross margin by 33% through growing the e-commerce division and identified COS reductions in the Events division.
• Controlled cash and extended runway an additional half year while maximizing healthy cash flows by managing working capital, invoicing (50% upfront / 50% before servicing), payment terms, and formulating monthly burn rate / cash forecasts. Established rolling cash forecasts for numerous companies and industries to determine future cash flow requirements and developed corrective plans to curb cash burn.
• Managed OPEX and identified potential monthly expense reductions by pinpointing undue retention costs of $1.5M, functional redundancies, legal fees, and savings through full-time to seasonal conversions.
• Built a corporate strategy deck for the CEO and CFO summarizing the over $25B U.S. display advertising industry’s behavior and provided recommendations on forming a virtuous cycle, competing with leading ad-tech companies, potentially more than doubling revenue, and securing their position in the online advertising value chain. Also performed competitive, market, and strategic analysis (structure/conduct/performance, Porter’s 5) of the $7B L.E.D. billboard market to help a mid-market client leverage existing competitive advantages for new market entry.

• Secured $5M in financing partnering with the Corp Dev team to build compelling presentations and investor pitches for fund raising which illustrated a company’s long-term potential.
• Spearheaded the creation of the investor deck used in efforts to raise a Series B funding target of $20M for a blockchain-based tech company.
• Performed due diligence and negotiated optimal debt financing options for an e-commerce retailer which included revenue-based financing, factoring, and inventory financing of ~$2M.

• Extensive experience building, improving, and refining numerous budgets, forecast, planning, valuation, and other financial models in various companies and industries.
• Strong working knowledge of various financial models and analytical tools including DCF, CAPM, NPV, IRR, rolling average, trend, sensitivity, and scenario modeling.
• Built and maintained numerous five-year, annual, and quarterly forecast models for various companies across several industries. Models included forecasts of 3-statement financials (income statement, balance sheet, cash flows), CAPEX budgets, labor plans, integration of historical monthly financial statements, and sensitivity analyses of assumptions. Created bottoms-up forecast models by country and service that included FX conversions to USD.
• Significantly improved the efficiency and flexibility of financial models by applying more suitable formulas, space-saving modeling techniques, streamlining relationships, and removing redundancies.
• Developed numerous SaaS, e-commerce, digital advertising, and service pricing models to support the launch and development of new products and services.

• Led business planning efforts to quantify financial impact of increases in service package prices for a major entertainment company. Worked in conjunction with key finance and operations leadership to develop new pricing strategy that accounted for subscriber price sensitivity, package mix, seasonality, and ancillary revenues (advanced receiver services, additional receivers, etc.). The final price increase recommendation was approved by the head of Sales and Marketing.
• Created variable pricing matrices to solve for the optimal combination of new customer additions and price increases to achieve yearly 10%+ revenue growth targets.
• Collaborated with Sales/Marketing and Strategy departments to develop and illustrate the impacts of various pricing strategies and rollout schedule of a technology company’s groundbreaking new blockchain-based services.
• Developed strategic scenario analyses and presentation materials for impactful potential new partners illustrating how the partnerships could produce an incremental $28M in revenue over 2 years.

• Hands-on and supervisory corporate controllership and executive level experience with several companies. Oversaw all aspects of accounting including A/P, A/R, payroll, and tax functions. Coordinating with outside counsel and firms, established and managed tax, insurance, banking, and brokerage relationships. Obtained all necessary regulatory licenses and filings for a new venture to be in compliance and operate in the U.S.
• Participated in monthly, quarterly, and year-end closing process within multiple companies assuring the accuracy of data and integrity of reporting in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).
• Directed the month-end process and reviewed variance analyses with the Finance and Accounting teams to investigate, audit, and present EBITDA discrepancies occasionally reaching >$2M to the C-Suite along with Risks and Opportunities to detail steps to mitigate looming risks while capitalizing on potential opportunities.
• Prepared monthly GAAP compliant financial statements, review packages, variance analysis, and key metrics for the management and executive teams as well as for the boards of directors.
• Conducted weekly executive revenue meetings and implemented dashboarding which graphically detailed weekly variances and revenues of ~$1M/month, thus providing key decision-making insights.
• Assisted with physical inventory count to ensure accounting accuracy for upcoming audits.

• Defined project scope and gained buy-in from the top-level stakeholders for SAP data migration and reimplementation project. Provided input for system configuration as it related to Master Data elements and modules. Developed project plans with trackable milestones.
• Led and coordinated the cross-functional initiative with the Accounting, Business Operations, and Finance departments at a major entertainment company to implement proper revenue data gathering of all B2B activities, mapping the as-is and to-be elements, and rectifying the corresponding accounting processes and reporting.
• Constructed all financial systems and infrastructure (the chart of accounts, QuickBooks Online, Expensify, Bill.com, Carta), the integrated 3 statement financials, and forecasts at a tech startup, while partnering with division leaders to produce guidance for it to generate >$28M in revenue and achieve profitability by its third full year of operation. Also, configured systems, instituted controls (expense approval flows), and designed policies (Expense Policy Handbook) to support the efficient growth and management of the company which led to a run rate savings of over $100K/month.
• Selected systems, negotiated, implemented, and configured a PEO/HR/payroll system (TriNet) to mitigate a company’s liability exposure, automate internal procedures, and provide greater more cost-effective employee benefits.
• Enabled an e-commerce company to be compliant with new international IOSS and VAT/duties collections standards and integrate the compliance functionality into the Shopify cart thus augmenting the company’s transition from DDU to DDP in the EU.
• Led corporate initiative to implement new sales commission plans with cross functional support from Sales, HR, Legal, Accounting. Plans detailed how to spur 45% YoY revenue growth while maintaining 30% profit margins.
• Researched available systems and selected, implemented, and configured MicroStrategy’s Business Intelligence solution for company-wide business analytics usage.
• Built automated financial reporting tools saving a company >10 man-hours/week using MySQL, Access, Excel, and VBA.
• Saved 8 man-hours/month by automating accounting processes and reports via Bill.com, Tradogram, and Trinet.

MICROSOFT EXCEL

• Expert Level Excel User including, Power Query, graphing presentations (charts, trend lines, axis scales, multiple charts), formula building (SUMIF, SUMIFS, SUMPRODUCT, X-Lookup, V-Lookup, H-Lookup, Arrays, etc.), conditional formatting, hyperlink creation, data validation (dropdown list, and warning error message), filters, pivot tables, analytical tools such as Goal Seeker, data tables, tracing dependents, financial functions (PMT, FV, PV, NPV, RATE, and IRR), logical and nested functions (IF, AND, OR, and NOT functions in formulas), string, date, and time functions, statistical functions (MIN, MAX, MEDIAN, STDEV), worksheet sharing and protection, and customization of toolbars.
• Intermediate Visual Basic for Applications Macros used in Excel programming.

MICROSOFT POWERPOINT

• Advanced Level PowerPoint User including, working with templates and layouts, inserting objects (pictures, symbols, charts, sound), creating graphs and organization charts, working with embedded and/or linked objects, slide transition and animation as well as creating and running slide shows.

Microsoft Word

• Advanced Level Word User including embedded objects, linked spreadsheets, charts, tables, and form design.

MICROSOFT ACCESS

• Intermediate Level Access User including, querying SQL databases for records, performing joins (inner, outer, right, left) both with the manual and graphical interface, connecting resultant queries to Excel, and exporting reports.

QUICKBOOKS ONLINE

• Intermediate QBO user, including G/L account and trial balance query, journal entries query, A/P research, exports to Excel, etc.

SAP

• Basic level SAP user, including G/L account and trial balance query, journal entries query, A/P research, exports to Excel, etc.

SAP BPC

• Used BPC Add-in for Excel in Excel templates in forecast and accounting close cycles and budget cycles.

IBM TM1

• Used Cognos Add-in for Excel in Excel templates in forecast and accounting close cycles and budget cycles.

OTHER

• Working experience with the following packages: SQL, Access, Microsoft Visio, SAP, IBM Cognos (Financial), Oracle EBP (Customer Data), Tableau, MicroStrategy. Trinet, Workday, Novatime, Ultipro, OnBase, Tradogram, Domo, Concur, Expensify, Bill.com, Carta, Asana, Wrike

UCLA Anderson School of Management

• MBA; Finance and Strategy concentration.

 
UCLA

• BS, Cognitive Science with a Computing Specialization

• Fluent speaking (business and conversational) and can read Japanese.
• Basic Spanish (passed Spanish AP test in high school).