Lauren Hobart, president and member of the board of directors at Dick’s Sporting Goods speaks during the Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, Oct. 22, 2019.
Sarah Silbiger | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Dick’s Sporting Goods on Tuesday announced its current president, Lauren Hobart, is set to succeed Ed Stack as chief executive on Feb. 1.
Stack, 65, will transition to executive chairman and remain chief merchant, the company said in a news release. He took over the business from his dad in 1984, when he was then 29 years old. He later took Dick’s Sporting Goods public in 2002.
“This is the perfect time for this transition,” Stack said in a statement. “We have the best management team in the company’s history, and the investments we have made in our people, our stores, and our communities are paying off.”
The announcement comes as Dick’s Sporting Goods continues to reap the benefits of consumers buying more workout gear, sporting goods and outdoor equipment during the coronavirus pandemic. Its e-commerce sales surged 95% during the third quarter, and it reported record quarterly same-store sales growth of 23%.
Here’s how Dick’s Sporting Goods did during its fiscal third quarter of 2020, compared with what analysts were expecting, based on Refinitiv data:
- Earnings per share: $2.01 vs. $1.01, expected
- Revenue: $2.41 billion vs. $2.23 billion, expected
The company said it is not offering an outlook for the remainder of the year due to the uncertainty stemming from the pandemic.
However, the company noted that, so far, “the favorable trends in our business have continued” into the fourth quarter. Through the first three weeks of the holiday quarter, it said same-store sales are up a high-teens percentage.
Following stints at PepsiCo, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan, Hobart, 52, joined Dick’s Sporting Goods in February 2011, as senior vice president and chief marketing officer, where she played a key role in helping develop and launch one of the retailer’s top private labels, CALIA by Carrie Underwood. In 2015, Lauren was promoted to executive vice president and CMO, and then chief customer and digital officer. She was named president in May 2017, and has served on Dick’s Sporting Goods’ board of directors since January 2018.
Hobart also earlier this year joined the board of directors of Yum! Brands.
More recently, Hobart has made the women’s athletic apparel and footwear market a bigger focus at Dick’s Sporting Goods, helping to drive the launch of additional private labels. She has helped Dick’s Sporting Goods refocus its strategy to compete against the likes of Amazon and Walmart, as a number of its sporting goods rivals — such as Sports Authority, Sport Chalet and City Sports — have filed for bankruptcy and shuttered stores in recent years.
She has helped the company refocus its inventories on key categories like youth sports, improve customer service and add in-store experiences like batting cages, to offer shoppers something they cannot find on the internet.
During the pandemic, however, the focus for Dick’s Sporting Goods has been driving sales online and encouraging shoppers to use its in-store pickup option for e-commerce purchases. During the third quarter, the company said its online sales accounted for roughly 21% of total net sales, up from 13% a year earlier.
As of Monday’s market close, Dick’s Sporting Goods shares are up more than 18% this year. The company has a market cap of about $5.2 billion.
Find the full press release from Dick’s Sporting Goods here.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
