Olin

With a combined revenue of $21 trillion and $2.1 trillion in profits, the 2026 Fortune 500 is the definitive list of America's largest companies.

Fortune 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Industries included in the sector are diversified and specialty chemical manufacturers.

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The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

F500-2021-472-Olin

Olin is one of the leading ammunition manufacturers in the United States; it sells that product through its better-known Winchester brand. Olin also produces various chemical products such as cleaning solutions.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

F500-2020-481-Olin

The manufacturer of ammunition and chemical products was founded in 1892.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

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Olin (OLN): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Every advance in artificial intelligence depends on a complex industrial backbone: the data centers, networks, power systems, and water resources that make large-scale computing possible. As demand for AI grows, the challenge is not simply to add capacity, but to design and build infrastructure that is reliable, resource-conscious, and thoughtfully integrated into the cities and regions that host it. Success depends on smart choices in data center site selection, architecture, grid access, cooling, and the relationships among developers, governments, and communities. Two leaders in data-center development and design examine what it takes to build at the scale AI requires, and with the public trust on which it depends.

Kevin Guan, Chief Investment Officer & Executive Vice President, Bridge Data Centres 
John Taylor, Global Critical Facilities Leader, Principal , Gensler 
Nicholas Gordon, Editor, Asia, Fortune 

Building the Machine: Infrastructure for the Intelligence Era

Conferences

All right, why don't, why don't we get started, um, so I, I wanna start with you, with you, Kevin, um, you know, you see so many headlines about, you know, new data center projects, huge sums of money being thrown around whenever I travel around the region in every country, people talk about data centers and how they wanna be a home for data centers, rightly or wrongly. Um, but why don't you help us kind of go behind those headlines and those big figures a little bit and tell us kind of what's actually going on in this AI data center boom here in Asia? Sure, just maybe to level set a little bit, um, so British Data Centers BDC were one of the pioneers and largest operators of hyper scale data centers in Southeast Asia. Um, and, uh, we're, you know, 70% owned by Bank Capital, which is an American private equity firm, um, to, to answer your question, um, you know, if you look at where demand is from a global perspective, is certainly robust, is no longer just about cloud services, is no longer about trainings, it's actually about, uh, AI adoption at scale, right, and. Uh, but ultimately all that demand needs to be supplied by critical digital infrastructure data centers and the physical limits to how quickly you can build data centers at scale, right? And so we're kind of seeing significant delays and challenges with delivery in the US. We're seeing, um, you know, demand far outceed supply here in Asia as well, but if you look at Asia as a whole, it's a collection of very. Different tutonic plates. Japan is different than Malaysia. Malaysia is very different than Australia, right? And what we're seeing now is that there's an incredible opportunity to address a short term, I would call, you know, supply constraint in some of the more um. Developed markets such as the US or Europe, right? But longer term, ultimately Asia has 50% of the global population and adoption for AI should take off and catch up relative to the US. And so we talked to our hyperscale customers, they're looking to us to resolve near term supply constraints in other parts of the world, right? But they're also more importantly, Investing for the medium to longer term for the demand potential that there is here in Southeast Asia and in APAC and beyond, um, and we're gonna talk about some of those constraints and those timelines in a second, but I wanna turn to John next and you know, as someone who's involved in the design and construction of data centers. You know what actually goes into that process? Is it more than just a big box with server racks in it? Like how should we think about what these data centers actually are? Well, I think we're well past the stage of them being a big gray box, um, that no longer fits the bill. Um, increasingly data centers are moving into urbanized areas. They're no longer single story, uh, large, sprawling campuses. They are in parts of the world, but in Asia where we're somewhat land constrained, they're often up to 1011 stories high. Increasingly they're coming into areas which are urbanized, sometimes in close proximity to communities, residential communities. And so we have to build sympathetically. Um, the facade, uh, the footprint. Obviously there's concerns around noise as well, there is. Some sensitivity there may be a bit overplayed, but we need to move data centers from being an industrial, perceived as industrial infrastructure to being something which is part of the civic infrastructure which serves a community, you know. There's a lot of pushback at the moment in parts of the world, and I think we're all having to respond, and it's only right that we do so. These sensitivities are, are real. And, and I want to pivot back to Kevin. I mean, because, you know, a lot of data centers are being built in hot climates. You're people are considering building them in kind of urban areas. When you're thinking about opportunities to kind of build new data centers in certain markets, I mean, how are you approaching these many different markets that are here in, in APAC? Yes, um, you know, I think to, you know, follow up on the constraint question, right, we're increasingly seeing more and more of that, um, everywhere, um, no matter what the underlying geography is and across sort of the valley chain, the bottlenecks of constraints are showing up, right, um, and so, um, how we think about resolving these constraints, how we think about, you know. Um, embracing opportunity is really through innovation and also through close partnerships with the community. I'll give you a few examples, right? Ultimately, we're in the business of converting power to compute, right? And so if you start with power. We've been working with innovative partners such as SK and Keppel on new energy solutions, right? We've been, uh, working with strategic partners on, uh, on behind the meter solutions, so you're not dependent and only drawing on the national grid, right? And then um the designs that go into our data centers where we co-develop with our hyper scale customers and our, you know, um, supplier partners, right, so we try to make them as efficient as possible so every NBA of power you can e-draw, you can generate more, you know, what we call IT capacity, right. And when it comes to water, for instance, right, in, in Malaysia, um, water is becoming more of a constraint. So instead of using and competing with local residents for clean water, what we've done is we've signed partnerships with the local municipal, and we've taken municipal wastewater, right? And we've built a wastewater treatment plan on our campuses. And we're recycling municipal wastewater using a portion of that for our data centers and what we don't use we return to the community in the form of clean water and it goes on and on all the way through operations where you know we work pretty closely with uh local um schools and communities to really train um workers for the next generation of uh. Work and careers in digital infrastructure, right? So I think innovation and close partnerships with local communities is what it takes to address increasing constraints. So I, I, I do wanna follow up on that and I also wanna get John's views after yours, but you know, the, the conversation about constraints have largely focused on power and water. I think water in particularly in the US, but I mean power is important too. Are those still kind of the main constraints on data on data center construction, or have we moved on to a whole new set of constraints? Those are still the constraints, um, but they're increasingly more innovation to resolve those constraints, right? So for further elaborate on water, we've developed waterless solutions, right? So you know, um. We, we can take closed loop water, circulate those what we call directed chips, cool the chips, and instead of evaporating the water, right, we can use other ways to cool down that water, right? So, so that's what we call water solutions. There's, uh, you know, besides recycling wastewater, there's more efficient ways to use water without wastage. But I think what's under the radar and what's becoming more of a constraint. Is sort of this competition for talent, right, and how do we retain, train, and, um, elevate talent and then what's actually becoming an even bigger constraint is capital, right? To give you a perspective, Bridge, we operate, you know, 600 megawatts this year will be about 1 gigawatt in operations next year. Depends on where you build these data centers. In Japan it could be as expensive as $20 million US dollars per megawatt, and that's only 20% of the total investment that goes in, the rest being servers, chips, racks that that that go into the data centers. And so there's a global, um, uh. I wouldn't say competition, but a global grab for capital as well, right, um, and, and, and I do want to return to that point later, but I do want to go to John. I mean, again, for you, do you see power and water kind of still being the major constraints for data centers, or again, are there, are there new things to keep in mind now? Well, there are, there are further constraints. I totally agree with the war for talent. That's, that's real, um. And er not enough young people coming into the sector is going to become an increasing challenge, but it's up to the sector to to train young people and find ways. The other constraints is really supply chain of long lead equipment is becoming a constraint very much. And some. Long lead items like generators can be over 3 years from from certain um global uh vendors, um. One of the challenges of course is also permitting. I think we've seen a pause in Southeast Asia in Thailand just over the last few days where there was There's a misunderstanding about how these buildings should be classified and uh and that's put a complete pause and there will be a reset there on the planning and permitting and that's after Malaysia's spurting growth that's probably the next fastest growing territory in Southeast Asia. So, getting back to the point earlier about buildings, one of the constraints is also how do we make these buildings, their form and function. Um, capable of still lasting the 15 to 20 years they're designed for, when actually the life cycle of the chip, the latest AI chips coming out, well you know where they're coming from, but say in Nvidia and others, is, is maybe less than 5 years, yeah, so we need to have buildings that have the sufficient floor loading to allow for adaptability, um, and, and well as uh as resilience and the ability to actually change the use of a single floor. In terms of the mix between the data center hall or white space and the plant rooms and all of the other equipment that needs to go into that, so we are having to look at that very, very closely and a firm like Gensler are not engineers, we're purely architects and that's our specialization, a global firm and we work with engineers in very, very close collaboration and together with the clients operations teams as well so that we've got actually sustainable designs with the adapt. Level of adaptability that we envisage. So you've got to take a very long term view of that building structure and its form going forward. I mean, we, we were talking about this kind of before our panel about kind of these sort of misaligned timelines. You have the investment timeline for ROI. You have the construction timeline. You have the timeline for the tech. You have the timeline for AI where it seems to change like once every week what the leading model is. You know, from your perspective, how do you get all these things to align? How do you how do you design your operations to get these timelines to make sense? Yeah, so I think, you know, to level set, I think there's two schools of thought to building data centers, right? There's the enterprise lens, right? These are, you'd be building, um, data centers for multi-tenants, usually smaller, maybe in in more prime locations. There are, um, uh, what we call the hyper scale lens, right? This is where you actually work pretty closely. On a pretty bespoke basis with only a handful of global hyperscalers and you're often building these in sort of, you know, um, at uh near prime locations, right? And these you often build at scale and so what we do is, is primarily hyperscale and so we work really closely with our off-takers, right? So, um, you know, to Piggyback off this point made just now, how we think about futureproofing is, you know, we've got these large campuses we generally sell out portions of it of it at a time to a particular customer. And for the portion that we sell, usually we design a couple of buildings at a time. These buildings are laid out where the corn shell structure is generally transferable across hyperscales, and what goes in are what we call modulized containers or modulized solutions. And so the uh corn shell that we build has the right ceiling, has the right right load, um, uh, support to be able to be so-called future proof, right, um, and what goes in, you know, some of the, you know, modular, um, uh, solutions such as, uh, the power modules, you know, things in there such as UPS and transformers can be swappable, right, and so. On a 5, 1015 year looking basis, um, our customers have the ability to essentially swap out pieces of the Lego brick without, you know, changing the structure, um, and so in a way that's how we align. The the design today with the unknown needs of the future. Um, we need to talk about the stakeholder engagement point because, you know, data centers, they are politically controversial, particularly in the United States, but increasingly here as well. I mean we've already talked about Thailand's decision, Singapore and Malaysia have gone back and forth about whether they want. Them or don't want them, I think Australia made some noise about it and then backtracked so the politics are confusing and there's some controversy around around it even here in Asia. So you know, John, from from your perspective again as you're thinking about data center design and making them part of the community, I mean what are the sorts of things that designers, operators, owners have to do to have communities be more comfortable with this industrial infrastructure now in an urban environment. Well there's an interesting case at the moment which we can't name, not even the country, I'll say it's in Asia, North Asia, um where actually the developer is giving back to the community in the form of a um a retail park. So a large proportion of that site is now being given back to the community um and and. We've, we've done some beautiful renders, we think they're beautiful, the client thinks they're beautiful. We've got to hope that the er that the authorities having jurisdiction, the city mayor and the community also agree. um but um that's, that's an interesting aspect now. So we're seeing much more integration of data centers into um mixed-use developments. Yeah. And not just in, in urban areas but in out of town. Be adjacent to shopping malls and community facilities where we can also be more sustainable in terms of the heat rejection can be used for district heating cooling systems, um there's even a case of swimming pools, would you believe, being heated from er from the rejected heat er coming out of the data center. But we've got to get ready for an evolving er landscape there and how, Campuses are gonna have to be able to er adapt for um. On-site power generation and energy storage is all the more important where the grid is unable to deliver power. And even in places where the grid is robust, Malaysia is a case in point where they've had something like 7 gigawatts of available power in very short order. That is not the case everywhere else, and other parts of Asia Pacific are waiting up to 5 years. I think the average is close to 4 years to get grid connection. Um, Kevin, I, I said I would return to the, to the capital point. And I mean again you read the sums of money that are being raised for AI spending, AI CapEx. I mean was like Alibaba raised $10 billion the other like couple weeks ago on the Hong Kong equity markets. So these are just huge sums of money that are all being put towards data center construction, compute, all of this stuff and you know, to, to ask a slightly sharper question, I mean what do you think about that kind of, you know, big spending huge sums of money approach towards CapEx building these giant compounds. You know, is that approach kind of does that, does that, does that meet the moment like is that more than we need? Is it still not enough both in general but also kind of here in Asia? Yeah, it really depends on what the ultimate use case is, right? And so, you know, there's gonna be segments of demand where, you know, it's what we call traditional workloads and these cloud services that's pretty uh inelastic and it's pretty durable, right? A significant portion what we addressed in Malaysia is for certain clients that, you know, do cloud hosting or video hosting for their social media platforms, right, we think that's pretty robust and pretty durable for the AI. That's a big part of the stack, right? Um, increasingly we're seeing evolving architecture where people are no longer thinking just training or just inference. They wanna deploy the latest generation of chips to do, you know, top shelf training, and when those become more. they start thinking about using that for inference and then later down the line 5-7 years down the line maybe using that for traditional services as well. So I think architecture is moving towards scale towards workload agility, right? And so which is why we're starting to see our customers come to us, say, you know, if you can deliver on a 28, 29 time frame, you can offer a couple 100 megawatts the path with a path to a gigawatt, you know, that's very attractive to them. From the operator lens, right, we're in the business of providing the critical infrastructure or a safe operating environment for our customers. So we where we build right in terms The underlying power commitment and also the fiber connectivity is, you know, it creates a strong moat. And you know from an investor's lens, right, if my initial contract with my off taker more than covers, you know, my build costs or has a good path to covering substantial portion of my build costs, that gives me comfort because I do think, you know, the chance of a second contract and a renewal is pretty high given how critical this infrastructure is for these, you know, large hyperscalers. Um, I don't wanna forget the sustainability energy question and maybe that's a question that maybe is suited for John. So I mean data centers need a lot of power, um, and it already seems like among some governments in Asia that there's a little bit of, let's say, kind of walking back some of the renewable commitments. There's a recognition that like, you know, fossil fuels are pretty reliable and data centers need reliable power. You know, how are you then approaching kind of the sustainability questions when it comes to internet to ensure that there isn't any, that there isn't any kind of real backsliding towards, you know, dirtier forms of energy and other things. Well, in terms of the timeline, we as a firm have made a commitment to um zero carbon by 2030. And that was made at the United Nations by our co-CEO at the time, Diane Hoskins, who now co-chairman. That's looking extremely challenging amongst our 4300 clients. I'm talking beyond data centers now, all 34 market verticals we address. Um, but that's a commitment we're trying to live by. Whether we have to lose some clients along the way, I hope not. But we are trying to ensure that um all of the materials which we are specifying into our buildings have um a. Carbon footprint which is lower than the alternatives, and I can give you an example for a hyperscaler in Europe where phase one we measured the carbon impact of all the materials which were supplied to phase one and for phase two we said, well, actually we need to get all of the vendors to tell us exactly what their data is and we will exclude the offenders in favor of those who have the Lower carbon impact and saved over 25% on the phase two of an almost otherwise identical design but with different material vendors. So that's, and we keep a register of that and those are the kind of ways where through design and tight specification and monitoring of what is installed by general contractors and their subcontractor supply chain. I look forward to seeing a beautiful data center in a neighborhood near me sometime soon. Um, I wanna thank Kevin and John for joining us today and talking through, talking us through this really interesting topic. Please give them a round of applause. Thank you.

AS Watson is approaching AI as an enterprise transformation—not a series of IT pilots. Its CEO-led, cross-functional approach embeds AI in workflows, decision-making, and performance management across the business, rather than leaving adoption to a single technology team. To support this effort, the company has appointed 31 global strategic technology partners to accelerate its AI-powered online and offline retail transformation.

In this one-on-one conversation, Group CEO Malina Ngai discusses what this shift means in practice—from smarter warehouse operations and more connected customer experiences to the leadership choices required to make AI integral to the way the business operates. How can companies turn AI investment into compounding value? And what must leaders be willing to change to achieve it? 

Malina Ngai, Group Chief Executive Officer, AS Watson Group 

From Efficiencies to Reinvention: Navigating the AI Transformation

Thank you, Andrew. Doctor Molina and I, thank you for joining us at Leaders Forum. In this session, we're going to discuss AS Watson's approach to AI transformation. And how this 185 year old company is reconfiguring for the intelligent age. But before we go into the details, um, I want to start at the beginning. Was there an aha moment for you? Was there a moment of realization when it became apparent that AI wasn't just another technology, but had the power to reshape your business, your entire industry, and therefore, it would require an entirely different approach? What did that moment look like? Well, as you said, we are 185 years old. So imagine that uh back in 1841, there's no electricity, no telephones, no internet, and certainly no AI. Uh, and, uh, over the past 185 years, well, basically it wasn't is as old as organized retail, I think. So we went through all the changes, you know, from an independent store to a chain store, and then the chain store becomes a category special. List, and then you from a local retailer becomes an international retailer. And then when the digital age came, and then we have to transform ourselves so that we have we have an Opus model which is offline, uh uh integrated with online and giving that customer experience. The interesting thing is, for all those changes over the two centuries, the change is mainly about like where you sell and how you sell. But then AI is very different. AI is very different because When you think about retail, it's a lot of processes. Oh gosh. You have to manage all the supply chain, move thousands and thousands of products, you have to manage promotions, you have to, uh, execute a lot of, uh, procedures in the company to get it running. In the past it's 10 hours a day, now it's 24/7. Now with AI. It's the first time we are able to look into how we reinvent the model so that we don't just focus on processes, OK. AI can do that, but we focus more on customers experience and problem solving. Now this morning, for example, when you wake up, You told me you run, right? When you wake up, you wouldn't be thinking about that. I need a bottle of vitamins. You think about, ah, today I need to be very energetic, right? On a good day. And when I wake up, when a customer wake up, they wouldn't be thinking about, I need a skincare product. They will be thinking about, oh, I need a healthy Younger looking skin. So that's what customers want. They don't want thousands of products. They just want retailer who understand them and being able to provide the right solutions. So with AI this is the first time that I told my team, this is the first time that we can look beyond just efficiency. It's about reinvention, how we relocate the way we serve customers. So that's when we think AI is transformational. So there wasn't necessarily one moment of friction. It was a kind of overall realization of this how expansive the influence of artificial intelligence would be. Um, so let's talk about how you're doing that. You've made the case that, that leadership, culture, organizational design is going to be what determines the success of implementing AI at scale. Um, and therefore, you've said in past remarks, it must be CEO led. So tell us about AS Watson's enterprise mandate around AI and what CEO ownership really looks like. When, um, decades ago when I led the digital transformation at the time, meaning that we have besides our physical retail experience, we have to build online. And at the time when we integrate technology, uh, either CRM, uh, e-commerce, and a lot of different types of technology. I will call it is vertical, it's top down. So we, we were in the boardroom, we decided we need to have go for this strategy. This is the investment, and then we pass that on to IT and pass that on to HR for example, for training. So then you go function by function and market by market. So that's what I call is vertical. But for AI what I What I see is my vision is that the whole organization needs to move together. So I would call the AI is horizontal. I can't afford the time to let a silo department or one department or a couple of departments to lead it and then try to roll out market by market and function by function. So then I started to um Uh, chair all the meetings. I talked to every market. I have 30 markets, and then I, I talked to every function to start everyone to understand and give them the transparency. There's still some companies where, um, the, the people who work in the company, they are They hesitate whether they should use AI or not use AI. But in AS Watson, we have announced our strategy, uh, last year is a human AI, uh, partnership strategy. And everyone, you should bring the AI assistant with you to work, help you to think faster and smarter. So that's step one. That's why I call it. COLED meaning that I, I would have to lead it because this is not the time to delegate. If you look at AI, I, I know we talk about AI like opportunities, but at the same time you look at AI, it's like crisis. Crisis meaning that technology develops so quickly, both from uh customer and consumer adoption and also all the companies. So if you, you don't do it in the right way quickly, it could be a crisis. But every crisis has opportunities. And at the same time, it allows me to bring in um a different meaning to agility, agility, because when we talk a lot about uh AI and everyone talks agility, we need to be very agile, the world is very uncertain. But agility is not speed. And this is what I told the team. I have a, I brought a video. OK, can I show a video? Yes, please. I think we have a video to demonstrate, uh, what Melina is talking about with regards to agility. Let's cue that. But Holland comes in for a pit stop. Time to refuel and change tires. Lou Moore himself changes the tires. Only 4 crew members, including the driver, are allowed to work on the car. It's a tense time. Holland stays in his seat, anxious to get away. Let's watch. Remember this 67 seconds. Mhm. Oh, just in case you didn't see it the first time. Yeah, this is the world record now is 2 1.8. So here we're looking at AI speed. This is not AI, this is real. Right? But I mean, this represents that, that agility. So, Normally when we see, even if you haven't been to F1, you have seen it on news, for example, you think, wow, Formula One is all about speed. Yeah. But in Formula One, when you have a car running 300 kilometers per hour, if you ask an engineer, Actually, the F1 engineer, the first thing they think about is not how to build a faster car, it's how to reduce the drag. So the weight of the car or the dirty air from the front and other car in the front, or they have uh some radio, uh they can't. clearly, so every millisecond decisions, it's like a drag if you don't do it right. So in an organization, if I can use this example, is that back in the 1950s, it's not, it's not slow, it's 67 seconds, but today it's 2 seconds. So when for an organization to look at AI it is not about how AI bring you speed. For us in AS Watson agility is acceleration minus friction. So, you've mentioned just now that you uh want to move from AI being a source of crisis to AI being a source of opportunity. You've given yourself as CEO the mandate to bring that together across your 30 markets, across your 17,000 stores um worldwide. So, let's talk about a specific Example of how you're doing that, the impact AI is making and and how you're measuring that impact as well. Can you give us a specific example of how you've reconfigured a workflow, a team, or maybe a whole business unit around AI and also the benefits you've seen as a result? Let's get into the weeds a little bit. Sure. Going back into that formula first, when I talked to the team, when I, I, I now see that every function like every, every two months. So the, the, the first question I ask them is not how you use AI. It's like, what friction have you identified? Because that is very important for us to take AI to the next level. And when you talk about ROI, a lot of people will think about AI investment is quite expensive, it's, it's, it's not cheap. So then what is ROI? Now if we focus just on AI efficiency, then we're trying to measure how many hours you save and so that will only just change the percentage. But what we are trying to do and think about is how to reinvent with the human and AI partnership so that we can change the equation. I brought you some equations, so share with you. I hold that up. So traditionally in, in, uh, in any organization. Then you have a, you have a perfect strategy in the boardroom which I pull up the image for Melina please which I would say is like you have a 100% perfect strategy but then as you move down the different levels of the Organization, every hands off, there's some discount to it because it's either uh communication scare people, how do they understand your strategy in the boardroom versus uh some inefficiencies or maybe capabilities. So if you look at the first number. is 50.4. Right. So meaning that if you, if you have a 100% perfect strategy in the boardroom, it could become 50. My customer can only experience like 50% of what we want to do. Now with AI you see the middle, this illustration is when you apply AI to organization, then it improves efficiency, right? And it could be even better than efficiency can cut off one of the process. So you see the formula actually have one less number in it and then that's nearly perfect. So then you get 99, quite close. So meaning that AI efficiency will help you to improve the percentages. But what we are trying to do in AS Watson is The human plus AI partnership because when you use AI to give us the speed, the scale, the intelligence, and the human brings, you know, that that context, we know how, what our customers need at what time. We, uh, we, the human also have that meaning and connection, how we provide a human touch to the surface. Then the formula is the equation completely changed. We can generate more value than just improving the percentage of every step. So this is how I explain this within the company. Agility is acceleration minus friction. You can't accelerate the pedal and then you have friction. So when we transform, we also need to look at the whole new way of doing every process and then focus much more on our customers. And what metrics are you looking at to measure the success of that? What we try to do, one, first of all, the first one, maybe a lot, maybe not a lot of companies do that. We measure the colleagues' engagement rate. So we, since we started um to promote human AI strategy in the company, we always do colleagues engagement rate, meaning that we, we ask the colleagues, you know, how they, whether they like work, what is the part they like, etc. But then the score has jumped up a lot in further to be in the uh several departments because the team leaders told us that when we started to use more AI. The colleagues love their job. They, they are able to have more interactions than facing the screen and that changes the engagement of our people working in the company to start with. And then we started to then put through into more customer front uh initiatives, then we measured customer love score. So for example, if we are able to free up more time for our store, our colleagues in the store to service the customer, then if you If you have shopped with Watsons, for example, then we will be asking you right after your shopping to give us your experience. How was that service? And we continue to see that customers love score improving. And this is uh not the usual way that people would measure AI because score, yeah, customer love score and our people love score in the company. So, let's talk about that engagement among your staff. So, as we mentioned at the top, AS Watson this year is celebrating its 185th anniversary. Um, it's an incredible achievement, almost two centuries. So, how do you tool and retool for new technologies while still keeping that heritage, that culture, that DNA that has driven your success for almost two centuries? How do you get that balance right between um embracing what's new without throwing out what has gone before? We actually start with the purpose of the company. Um, back to a decade ago, and we, we are Asian-based international company. So in the early days, we don't, it's not like some of the, uh, maybe the European or US company where you have a vision statement and a mission statement. We're very focused on like generating profit. So then, but then a decade ago, I started to see that we, we needed to transform the, the company. And it's not just a company that is just in Hong Kong. We're in 30 markets in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. So how do you link everyone together in terms of their focus without losing focus, whatever technology you put in a company. So then we, uh, I put in a team of young managers, not for a consult consultancy, but then we would brainstorm what what should be our purpose in AS Watson and in one hour they came out of the room and they told me with a flip chart at the time, sorry, still like 1010 years ago, a while ago they have flip chart and then a smiley, they said, Melina, I think the purpose of AS Watson. should be to put a smile on customers' faces. It's easy to understand what in whatever languages, it's easier to understand whether you are working in the office, you're working in the warehouse, or you work in the stores, and this is what we believe in. And within 30 minutes, we said this is going to be our purpose. Hence the customer love score. Exactly. So we don't have mystery shopper, it's customer love score, we just ask our customer. So we, we basically, we put our purpose in the center of everything we do. So here is AI when we even when we put in, we have to do supply chain optimization a couple of years ago when we start to have, have our Opus or model, etc. Then even you go to the warehouse, I, I talk about customer love, because if we are able to manage all the inventory on Time and being able to do the right delivery, we put a smile on customers' faces. And then the and then the the warehouse team start to understand what they do. They are not hiding somewhere in a very hot uh um premises to move products. They're actually putting a smile on customers' faces. Likewise, every function we go through that everyone knows this is the thing they do has a contribution to customer love. I, I believe when the company has a purpose. Whatever technology is not going to take away that focus. Absolutely. So customer satisfaction, customer love being a single-minded obsession that drives every decision you make, whether that's staffing, whether that's technology, and that being at its core. Um, I want to move on to talking about um employee love and, and engagement there. So you've talked before about AI as a tool for inclusion, which is interesting and, and counter. some oft-cited narratives around AI and how it could potentially um exacerbate existing human biases and so on. But at AS Watson, you've reported that AI powered automation at a warehouse in China has actually helped to increase the female workforce. You're, of course, on our most powerful women Asia list, uh, Melina, tell us about this and, and tell us the impact the tech has had. I was in Foshan two months ago. Uh, I went to our stores and then I usually try to make time to go to the warehouse. It's a bit remote, but then it's important. When I, I, I have read a lot of documents and videos and everything about the, the, the automation and the AI we put in the infantry forecasting, etc. I've seen that, but until the time that I was, I walked into the warehouse. I look around, it's not like you have many people moving boxes anymore. Everything is so orderly because we put in the different automation. And the thing is, the team told me that in the past, the warehouse, like a typical warehouse, we, we have 8 in in China and 80 around the world, but usually it's about 80% of our team would be males because we do require a lot of heavy lifting. We have big boxes. But now because of automation, uh, all, all, both males and females, they don't need to lift anything very heavy. We ensure that the robot can do that because it's for for our colleagues' wellness. So then in that warehouse, we have 62% of our colleagues, they are Now females and that was something that really positively surprised me of how technology can also bring more diversity in the company and actually in our technology team in AS Wilson we are our senior leaders 50% male and 50%. And females we have evolved that over the years uh for even for the technology team. We're here, Melina at the Fortune Leaders Forum. So I want to close by asking you a question on the leadership choices you've had to make enabled to do everything you've just been talking about. What has been the hardest leadership choices required to land that AI transformation? What must leaders be willing to change to get an ROI on AI? The hard decision for a lot of leaders, or maybe I'll start with the biggest risk of all the leaders with this type of AI, um, technology is We put AI to improve uh today's process. So basically you get a better version of yesterday. Uh, but we lose sight on how we can use AI, which is really transformative technology, to help us to reinvent how we serve our customers. Um, and the choices sometimes we will have to make is we focus a lot on the numbers, like how much we need to invest. But my starting point was actually focus a lot on human. What's the role of human going forward? Uh, is it really that we with AI we're going to cut out 30% of our workforce, or actually it's going, we are going to increase the quality of our people intelligence. Uh, in the past, it's just not possible to handle that amount of data within a quick speed and to analyze things and make decisions. But now with AI help people can actually play a much higher quality role. So initially there was something that is not easy to explain to the board. And what we are trying to, to think about also is not just an ROI for, for this year, how many hours we save. It's about how many, how many new ideas we have generated. Since last year October, we, we, we launched our strategy, our human AI strategy last October. And since last October, Not even a year. We have generated a lot more new ideas that we can put out in the market for the customers and for the way we, we serve. This is the kind of value we are trying, we are trying to, um, to reinvent. So this is, I, I, we have a lot of leaders in the room. And I do hope that you can focus more on the human side. And for me, my, my vision for AS Watson is that I would love to be able To create a sustainable company that's powered by technology. But with a human soul and going forward, I think retail is going to be more human. It's not going to be less. That's a perfect note to finish on. Thank you so much, Melina, for talking to us about AS Watson CEO-led enterprise level AI transformation, about customer love as a metric for success, and finally the difficult leadership decisions required to get there. Please join me in thanking Doctor Melina Nay. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Today's travelers and consumers expect more and have more options than ever before. The companies winning their loyalty aren’t just keeping pace—they're making big operational bets and executing under pressure. The operational leaders of Southwest Airlines and MGM Resorts have both been inside major transformations: reinventing legacy systems and reimagining the guest experience end-to-end. They'll share what it takes to stay ahead of shifting consumer expectations and bring an entire organization along for the ride. 

Ayesha Molino, Chief Operating Officer, MGM Resorts International
Tony Roach, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer and Brand Officer, Southwest
Moderator: Ruth Umoh, C-Suite and Leadership Editor, Fortune; Co-Chair, Fortune COO Summit

The Bold Bets that are Reshaping Customer Experience Today

How they've been saving the best for last. Aisha and Tony, thank you so much for joining us here. We're happy to be here. All right, Aisha, let's start with the news, the big news that broke yesterday. Uh, Barry Diller's takeover bid for MGM at an $18 billion valuation, as you already know, he's essentially saying the market is undervaluing the company and there's more growth to unlock. So from your seat as COO, do you agree? Do you think the market has been underestimated in MGM? So. We did receive a takeover offer yesterday and our board of directors is now going to begin its work of doing its fiduciary responsibility in terms of maximizing shareholder value. And you know, from my perspective, the trick is really to make sure that we keep our 60,000 employees focused on what they need to do every single day, which is deliver the best guest service possible. And at our scale that is, you know, it is a big task to keep that kind of population focused, but I think our leaders are well positioned to do it and everyone is very zoned in on the task at hand. I'm gonna push. Do you agree with the sentiment? I'm not gonna comment on that. Fair enough. Uh, well, let me add this question, you know, because in his April letter to shareholders. Dillard did talk about MGM's combination of real world assets and digital growth opportunities. So as you think about reshaping the customer experience, which of these opportunities excite you the most right now? Oh, you know, uh, we are at MGM Resorts. We're in the business of delivering fun. It is fantastic, and that is something that we truly get to do every single day. And from my perspective as COO, that's where the magic lies, right? And so one of the things that I've been really focused on, especially in a business like ours which is all about delivering experience, is how do I get my leaders laser focused on that proposition, get them back on the floor, get them engaged with the customers, get them anticipating customer needs, and then ultimately differentiate, delivering a differentiated customer experience. We're going to dig into and. What that looks like in practice. Let me turn over to you, Tony, uh, at Southwest, which is also going through its own organizational shifts, certainly another period of transformation. The company announced recently you're now going to oversee not just brand and customer experience but also people leadership and development, fairly unusual combination you don't see all too often. What's the thinking behind putting the employee experience and the customer experience under one sole leader? Yeah it's it's, it's, it is complex in terms of how it is designed from an organization stand standpoint but the actual principle is simple we're trying to elevate the employee experience and their journey so that they can deliver the type of customer experience that our brand and our business essentially is counting on. And so as we've been making transformation, especially on the customer facing side we wanna elevate the transformation for our employees which is, you know, we have 80,000 employees who are the lead actors in everything that we're doing and so this new role just brings these together and essentially joins these two efforts in tandem, uh, so that we don't miss a beat. Southwest is in this period of reinvention. About two years ago, the company pivoted, uh, did away with assigned seating, or it announced it was gonna do it with assigned seat in July 2024. Um, also got rid of course corrected, uh, on its two free checked bags policy which was long known for. For, uh, and was really one of the most recognizable parts of the brand you're now in the process of doing the work actually on the ground doing the work. So what have you learned about leading and bringing customers along through a transformation, especially one where some customers were a little iffy about the changes that were coming to a company that they've known for for decades. Yeah sure if you guys haven't known we've been going through a few changes at Southwest. I don't know if everybody in the room has seen those, um, but it's been the talk of the industry and at the root of it you have to understand what led to the changes you know we are a brand that's been iconic, um. Uh, but we wanna be sustainable and so fundamentally we needed to change our business model so that we have the future to look forward to and so when you anchor into that you then go and pick and choose where you wanna change and our, our, our position on this is you have to change the ecosystem around. Uh, the heart, but you don't change the heart, meaning the heart being the people and the service that we provide. So we went from open seating to assigned seating in, in, in any industry that's like changing the engine in a car from an airline standpoint, um, because it's a revenue change in terms of what you sell, but it's also an operational change. I mean how you turn airplanes and how you seat them matters and so we did both of those at the same time. And I would say when you look at what's going well, both the revenue has, has been exceeding our expectations operation actually is running better than it was before and now you have customer and people sentiment that typically trails those. And so what you see is doing now is really turning our attention to post-transformation. It's about the transformation of the brand and the culture, um, and I think when you look ahead that remaining piece I think really puts us in a position for the next 50 years to be. Uh, just as beloved as we were in the 1st 50, let me follow up with you before I turn to you, Ayesha. There's what I call this like corporate dead zone where a company is no longer cheap enough to be a budget retailer, but they're not seen as elite enough yet to compete with the legacy first class experiences. So how are you defining Southwest's unique version of premium, uh, so you don't get trapped in this forgotten middle. Yeah, and travel is occasion based, especially the airline, and so there's enough occasions to meet, uh, different needs. And so when you think about the Southwest product, it's always been middle basically middle class to lower class in terms of what we've been adding and all we're doing is widening in the aperture to be able to add more premium into the mix doesn't mean we're trying to be Delta because we don't think we need to be Delta to be successful, but when you look at how people travel. Travel, you may have a different product that you prefer by the occasion, and we think that we can add some more premium into the mix that will serve those needs and be accretive to a kind of the base business that we've been, uh, that we've created over time. Aha, you have a similar balance and act that you're navigating. I mean, MGM owns a massive portfolio of hotels on the Vegas Strip, and especially as consumers are more cost conscious travelers, they're scrutinizing the cost of a Vegas. Yet they still expect more luxury, more personalization, more entertainment, more convenience. How are you thinking about delivering value for price sensitive guests without also diluting this premium brand and and alienating some of those luxury customers you have? Yeah, absolutely. Differentiation such as we have in our portfolio creates complexity but also opportunity, and we had to really redefine what value means in the context of our portfolio. And that redefinition is what? So at a property like Bellagio, um, it really means, again, an ultra luxury customer experience that is personalized and unparalleled for Luxor and Excalibur, which were, which are two of our more value. Oriented resorts. We actually launched an all-inclusive earlier this year. It's a package we're very proud of, and it includes room, resort fee, parking, 3 meals a day for 2 people, including alcoholic beverage, show tickets, roller coaster rides, so really the entirety of the Vegas experience at one fixed price. And we understood, we heard loud and clear last year from our customers that they felt like they weren't getting that value proposition from Vegas anymore, particularly at our core properties. So we, we listened, we heard it, and we changed. Following up with you, you know, guests don't think in terms of hotels and restaurants and rewards apps and loyalty programs. They think about whether this trip felt effortless. Um, so how do you design an experience that feels seamless across so many different touch points from beginning to end? Just think about the full customer journey. Yeah, it's a real challenge, you know, the customer journey, of course, begins when the customer starts actually searching for their destination, searching for their trip, right? And so it's from that point on that we really think. About how we make the customer journey as smooth and frictionless as possible. So that's everything from looking at our marketing to redesigning and reevaluating our booking flows, to once the customer lands at the airport, we work very closely, Tony and I were just talking about this, with our airport authority to make sure that facilitation of passenger traffic through our airports and on our roads is smooth and seamless. Every part of it has to be considered when they enter the property, and the all-inclusive was A great example of this, you know, we are a massive company that is not designed to be an all inclusive. We had to reverse engineer that and at the back end stitch every piece of that together to really create a product that to the customer felt like that, felt seamless and was technologically enabled, but we really went through every piece of it as a customer would to make sure that we could deliver on that promise. Of course deployment of standard technology like mobile check-in, kiosk, check-in, check out. Um, but also enhancing the in-room experience in terms of making sure that In-im requests that go to our housekeeping team, for example, are delivered faster and that service can be delivered smoother and quicker as well. So you just have to look at every part of it but walk, walk it as a consumer would. So it definitely has become more complex. Yeah. Similar question for you, Tony. Southwest has also said the customer journey extends far beyond the flight itself. So as you also look at that entire journey, where are you most focused right now and what tells you where you need to invest in the future? It customers clearly tell you where you need to invest because you're looking at where behavior is changing. You can also look at what makes or makes the trip in terms of retention and growth and so we, we follow that very closely, um, and for us it's similar to ISIS. I mean you customers travel and there's a lot of time in between travel where they're considering traveling again and so for us the journey is that entire ecosystem. Um, so the way that we prioritize though how to make sure we're getting the seams correctly is really where the commercial side of the business has to partner with the operational side because that's usually where the seams are broken. It's something we are selling that the operation has to deliver and we created a team that that that is their sole job is to create a joint commercial and ops team. And they pick those experiences that often get broken on that handoff, and their job is to try to fix it and remove friction out of that. You were telling me earlier that Southwest is in this era where it's going back to its roots and it has to make its brand very clear. What is the new Southwest? Similar question, what is the new MGM? Well, the new Southwest is the old Southwest. Um, back to your roots, when you look at, people used to, people fell in love with Southwest because we, it was fun. It was fun to fly. The service was great. Before we gave away two free bags. People loved Southwest for the flight attendants and, you know, we had a sense of humor and our, our ads were. etc. and we think that there's a lot of history that actually is the bones of where we have to be back again. So in this, in many cases the the revitalization of what actually created the love we have a heart at the bottom on the bottom of our airplane is that's very rare and so we think that is actually the secret to the future and so you'll see a revitalization of that. So some of the or changes you talked about at the beginning is if we're gonna market that we gotta deliver that. My job is to try to marry those two things together. And very similar for MGM, you know, I think, especially what we're seeing from our customers today is that what they value is a place where they can come and feel special. At our scale, that can be hard to deliver, but our focus is really, really on that. I mean, I said this earlier, but we have spent an extreme, extremely significant amount of time thinking about how we get our leadership teams, refocused on our customers and our employees and not sitting in their offices on teams calls, right? How do we free up the time and how do we create the intention to engage and make sure that when we talk about what our customer wants, we're actually going out there and talking to our customer. Millions of them walk through our doors every single day, and we have this incredible opportunity to get that immediate feedback and that's really so much of where our focus today is, which is much how the industry operated 30 years ago. Much of that customer's feedback, as you already alluded to, is certainly in person meeting with the customer. I meet with those who are coming to your various properties, but both of your organizations also sit on a treasure trove of customer data and feedback. How do you go about turning that information into action, into meaningful improvements? Give some examples. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like most companies in our industry, we obviously use NPS as a really meaningful indicator of how we're doing, and it provides a lot of empirical data on really key issues about the customer experience and we utilize all. That to engage both in terms of big picture sort of policy and procedural shifts, but also direct engagement with the customer. And so that's a really, really meaningful data pool. Ultimately that will tell one part of the story, but it really is our customers who directly give us the narrative, right? And you need to, in my experience, we need to marry the both of those in order to really compellingly understand how we need to change, especially when we're talking about major shifts in the operating business. very similar, it, you know, NPS data is certainly there. AI allows you to listen to all channels now. I try not to listen to Reddit because it's just inherently negative. We can see everything, and the thing is you see it very quickly. What do you do about it is actually how you prioritize what actually is mattering the most. Our employees adding them into that mix typically leads to the actual solution when we launch. Assigned seating on day one we knew we were not boarding the airplane correctly. People did not like the boarding groups. They hated them. And so we almost the first 2nd day we started working on changes. We're on iteration number 7 now until we get it perfect and that's just a matter of you take feedback, you use the right people and the experts to solve solutions, and you need a mentality in the organization that that's OK. Any questions from the audience? If you have a question, raise your hand. We'll bring a mic over to you. Any questions please remain a few minutes. Let's end with this. Um, if you could leave this audience of fellow operating chiefs with one principle for leading customer centered transformation at scale, what would it be? Perhaps Tony, we start with you. Say, would you repeat the question please? Uh, if you could leave this audience of CEOOs with one principle for leading customer centered transformation at scale, what would that be? Yeah, I think, I mean, for our business and, and very similar probably to yours is the outcome of the experience we want is only what we enable our people to do, and, uh, we can design as much as we want on paper, um, but it's a matter of equipment and empowering our people to be able to do it with clear expectations, the right infrastructure, so they're incentivized to continue to do it. Uh, and then the motivation to give them something to believe in. Please closing salvo. Yeah, absolutely. You know, for us, what we've realized that with our scale and our number of frontline employees, we have to keep it very, very simple, and the core foundation of our operating business is that our employees have to be empowered to say yes. They, at our scale, things go wrong, they go wrong every single day. We know that. We can't always prevent that, but we can 100% influence how we recover from it. And to make sure that that is really the operating foundation that's distilled. Throughout the organization, whether you've been there 30 years or a day is really the core of what we focus on. Yeah, well, both of you are certainly correct in that everyone's always thinking about their next trip. I certainly am itching for my next trip. Uh, Tony, Ayesha, thank you for a thoughtful discussion on leading transformation while still keeping customers at the center. Very much appreciated.

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