From A.I. to crypto, here's what mattered to CFOs this week

Happy Friday!

Being in the food delivery business is competitive. But a metric DoorDash CFO Prabir Adarkar focuses on is total orders, he told me. “It’s a metric that we report, externally,” Adarkar says. “The reason it’s important is because it speaks to the scale of our platform. But more importantly, it represents the proxy for the economic value that we created for merchants.” Customer retention is also something he hones in on, Adarkar says. And that’s an area where he believes DoorDash has an edge over the competition, he told me.

The coronavirus pandemic caused economic uncertainty for many businesses. Some companies outperformed their peers in prioritizing employee wellbeing. Fortune‘s annual list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For spotlights companies that put their employees first. But it turns out that valuing your workforce can also result in better financial performance. Companies that earned a place on Fortune‘s list returned 22% vs. 17.3% for the S&P 500 over five years.

Coinbase debuted this week on the Nasdaq with a reference price of $250 a share. But the company closed at $328.28, “for a valuation of just over $61 billion,” my colleague Shawn Tully writes. Coinbase went the route of a direct listing instead of a traditional IPO or even a SPAC to create transparency, the company’s CFO Alesia Haas said in March during a Reddit AMA session: “We believe that takes us a step forward in meeting our mission as the open financial system because everyone can participate in our direct listing. It creates the transparency that we’re hoping to bring to Coinbase.”

I had a chat with Juergen Lindner, senior vice president of marketing for SaaS at Oracle, about the tech company’s “Money and Machines: 2021 Global Study.” Oracle found that 85% of business leaders surveyed said they want help from a robot for finance tasks. But Lindner says incorporating robots, A.I., and machine learning can actually help CFOs free up time to go deeper into other areas they care about. “If you have time to really be more analytical, more strategic and work with the business versus working on fairly predictable, repetitive tasks … a lot of career progression will come out of it,” Lindner says.

See you Monday.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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The role of CFOs within an organization has never been more important. Fortune is building a community for CFO leaders to engage with and learn from colleagues across industries. In partnership with Workday, our CFO Collaborative quarterly event series will focus on the evolving CFO role. Our first conversation will take place May 11 and address “The Critical Role of the CFO in the Post-pandemic World.” We will be joined by Adena Friedman, president and CEO, Nasdaq and Allen Parker, CFO, Zillow. This is the moment for CFOs. Click here to register to attend.

Big deal

Flywire, a global payments enablement and software company, released a new survey that found 9 of 10 finance professionals surveyed said global expansion efforts could accelerate, "if businesses could deal with foreign exchange rates in an easier way," according to the report. The survey also found that CFOs, VPs of finance, controllers and other executive-level finance professionals are highly concerned about areas including cybersecurity and technology integrations.

Going deeper

Explore Fortune’s Q2 investment guide for subscribers:

10 stocks fund manager Cathie Wood is buying—and 3 she’s avoiding
Bitcoin investors: Learn about the Hunt brothers and the silver market
Why some investors are betting on cash
How to invest for the 22nd century
Everything you need to know about buying NFTs
What the savviest short-seller has in his sights next
The investment billionaires like Bill Gates are doubling down on
Coinbase? Bitcoin? The case for making a few wild bets

Leaderboard

Some notable moves from this past week:

Leanne Cunningham was appointed CFO at Brown-Forman, and will succeed Jane Morreau on July 2. Morreau, executive vice president and CFO, will be leaving Brown-Forman on July 1, after an almost 30-year career at the company. Cunningham currently serves as senior vice president, shareholder relations officer of global commercial finance and financial planning and analysis.

Neil Mitchill was appointed CFO at Raytheon Technologies, as Anthony O’Brien has "stepped down from his role as CFO," the company announced. Mitchill was previously the corporate vice president of financial planning and analysis and investor relations for Raytheon and the former CFO of Pratt & Whitney. "CEO Greg Hayes and Neil Mitchill in his new role as CFO will provide further details on Raytheon Technologies' performance and outlook during the next quarterly earnings call," the company said in the announcement.

Steve Hamric was appointed CFO at Cognosante, effective April 12. Hamric succeeds Kevin Mostek, who will lead the newly created Corporate Development team, the company said in an announcement. Hamric recently served as executive vice president and CFO of 1901Group.