Craig Gunckel has been appointed chief executive officer of The ODP Corporation, which runs retailers Office Depot and OfficeMax, parent Atlas Holdings announced Wednesday.
Atlas also said its all-cash acquisition of ODP closed Wednesday. Gunckel replaces Gerry Smith, who left once the transaction was complete.
The deal, valued at about $1 billion, was announced in September. The tie-up received all necessary regulatory approvals and was approved by ODP shareholders on Friday. As of Wednesday, The ODP Corporation is a private and independently operated company, so its stock has ceased trading and will be delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Gunckel may be new to ODP but he is an Atlas veteran. Most recently he was CEO of label and receipt solutions company Iconex, which was previously owned by Atlas. In all, he has almost 30 years of leadership experience in the paper and packaging industries.
Private equity firm Atlas and its affiliates own and operate 30 companies in automotive supply, building materials, capital equipment, construction services and other sectors, with annual revenue of more than $26 billion.
Its newly acquired office supplies and solutions company has been in the midst of a slow-moving turnaround, which has entailed taking some focus away from retail and toward the business-to-business side of its operations. In its most recent quarter, though, its “B2B segment saw only a modest acceleration and its retail division slowed down further” as the economy and consumer environment weighed on its performance, according to UBS analysts led by Michael Lasser.
“Our main takeaway from ODP's 3Q results was that the company will take some time for the progress on its turnaround to meaningfully materialize,” they said in a Nov. 5 research note.
Under new ownership, ODP will be more agile, focused anew on the two core businesses, Office Depot OfficeMax and ODP Business Solutions, Gunckel said in a statement.
“With a refreshed strategy, commitment to our customers and Atlas behind us as our long-term partner, we’ll bring renewed focus and discipline to how we operate, support our people and drive sustainable, profitable growth on both sides of the business,” he said.
