DZS hires chief accounting officer

DZS (Nasdaq: DZSI), a global leader of broadband networking and AI-driven cloud software solutions, today announced that Brian Chesnut has been appointed as the company's Chief Accounting Officer (CAO), reporting directly to Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Misty Kawecki. Mr. Chesnut will be responsible for working closely with the CFO, senior leadership and the company's new independent public accounting firm, BDO USA, overseeing all corporate accounting functions including reporting, governance and internal controls.

 Mr. Chesnut is an accomplished executive who brings to DZS nearly 15 years of accounting leadership experience. Before joining DZS, Mr. Chesnut was the Vice President and Head of Corporate Accounting for Continental Battery Systems, where he helped manage $1 billion in revenue for the company's U.S. and Canadian divisions, led a successful Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation to combine seven legacy companies and established internal controls to improve financial statement reporting. Mr. Chesnut also served in various senior management roles with several public companies including Jacobs Engineering, where he designed and implemented a consolidation process to improve reporting on $1.5 billion in revenue from Jacobs' joint ventures.

 Mr. Chesnut joins DZS following several strategic transactions including securing $25 million of working capital through a private placement of DZS common stock and a term loan and the divestiture of the company's lower margin Asia business, which eliminated $43 million of debt and raised an additional $5 million.

Read the full press release here.

DZS