Target chief Brian Cornell — who led a major comeback at the retail chain — will stay on the job for three more years, the company announced Wednesday.
Cornell, 63, was approaching Target’s (TGT) mandatory retiring age of 65 for its top executive. But the company said it was eliminating that policy. Cornell is also the chair of Target’s (TGT) board of directors.
The announcement ensures stability at the helm of Target amid one of its worst stretches in years. The company’s stock has dropped roughly 30% this year and the chain is contending with a glut of unsold inventory as decade-high inflation has pressured many of its shoppers.
“Right now, it’s really hard to gauge the consumer,” Cornell said in an interview Wednesday on CBS.
Cornell, a former Walmart (WMT) and Pepsi (PEP) executive, took over as Target CEO in the summer of 2014 when the company was reeling from a massive data breach during the prior holiday shopping season.
Cornell helped revitalize the brand, overseeing a strategy to remodel stores and strengthen the chain’s online business to compete with Amazon (AMZN). The company has since used its stores as fulfillment hubs to ship customers’ home delivery orders.
During Cornell’s tenure, Target has also opened hundreds of smaller stores in cities and college towns and added dozens of popular in-house clothing and home goods brands. In 2019, CNN Business named Cornell its top CEO of the year.
Target boomed in 2020 and 2021 as shoppers rushed to stores to purchase essentials, home goods, office supplies and other merchandise during the pandemic.
Target has added $40 billion in sales during Cornell’s tenure and its stock has almost tripled. The company is the seventh largest retailer in America by sales, according to the National Retail Federation.
