HomeWorks Energy

Andrew Church

Andrew Church is a strategically focused CFO with extensive experience leading financial and operational transformations across small to mid-cap public and private equity-backed companies. He excels in driving profitability, consummating acquisitions, and reengineering key processes. A trusted strategic partner to CEOs and investors, Church has a proven track record of enhancing cash flow, optimizing performance, and delivering Increased shareholder value through disciplined execution and visionary leadership.

In an exclusive interview with Manage CFO, Church shared his expertise as CFO and valuable thoughts on the importance of finance and operations.

Andrew Church built his career on a simple belief. Real corporate transformation happens when financial discipline meets operational understanding. He began in New York City at a Big Four accounting firm, serving large public and private organizations as a CPA. After six years, he recognized that financial expertise alone would not create lasting business impact. He stepped away to complete his MBA in general management at Cornell, focusing on operations management and marketing to broaden his skills and prepare for senior leadership roles.

Over the next 35+ years, Church intentionally pursued roles across diverse industries. He believed that the fundamentals of improving profitability, cash flow, and market share apply across sectors. His strength became guiding companies through periods of rationalization, growth, turnaround, and reinvention. He describes himself as a change agent who thrives in environments that require renewed focus, improvement and urgency.

“Seek out and celebrate wins connected to strategic KPI’s — margin expansion, working capital reduction, market share growth— in order to reinforce behaviors necessary to create a sustainable competitive advantage and establish an enterprise-wide continuous improvement engine.” says Church, CFO, HomeWorks Energy.

Elevating HomeWorks Energy for its Next Chapter

At the beginning of Church’s journey with HomeWorks Energy, the company experienced rapid growth and was demanding more robust financial discipline and operational control. Church saw this as an opportunity to build a stronger, more sustainable organization. It had achieved impressive double-digit compound annual growth primarily through organic expansion. Despite its strong performance, it remained privately owned by its two co-founders preparing to raise institutional capital in the near future.

Church was hired to help prepare the business for its next phase of growth. He assumed responsibility for accounting &finance, treasury, FP&A, legal, compliance, supply chain and human resources. His initial focus was on strengthening the finance organization, upgrading talent, improving core processes, and accelerating the monthly close to align with the expectations of future institutional investors. He also began preparing the company for strategic bolt-on acquisitions as part of a broader growth strategy, ensuring each opportunity is guided by a clear integration plan and continuous monitoring of progress toward achieving the targeted post-closing synergies.

Drawing on more than two decades of private equity portfolio company experience, Church is now building governance, financial reporting, and performance structures that meet institutional investor standards at HomeWorks Energy. He and his newly-hired team are preparing the business for either a minority investment or a complete change of control and positioning it to meet future requirements should it pursue a public listing, including PCAOB and FASB expectations.

“Seek out and celebrate wins connected to strategic KPI’s — margin expansion, working capital reduction, market share growth—in order to reinforce behaviors necessary to create a sustainable competitive advantage and establish an enterprise-wide continuous improvement engine.”

Under his leadership, HomeWorks Energy completed a bank refinancing that provided greater liquidity through renegotiated term loans and an expanded, more flexible revolving credit facility. In addition, the financial integration of an acquisition was completed. Church also introduced the framework of a company-wide continuous profit improvement initiative which has resulted in gross margin and EBITDA margin expansion. Finally, the company improved working capital and is preparing to introduce a supply chain financing program that enables vendors to be paid early while extending HomeWorks’ payment terms with the funder, freeing up additional cash flow to be used to fund debt reduction, marketing investment and future acquisitions.

Delivering Value and Developing Tomorrow’s Leaders

Church, who was named “CFO of the Year” by the Philadelphia Business Journal in 2021, introduced PE-style internal reporting supported by financial and operational KPIs. This enables deeper visibility into performance by product line and region, identifies variances, uncovers root causes, and drives corrective action. He institutionalized the aforementioned profitability improvement program that sources ideas across the organization to increase pricing, reduce labor and material costs, and lower SG&A spending. More recently, he and his group have begun supporting various internal teams in rolling out organic growth initiatives designed to diversify the Company’s business unit portfolio by expanding into adjacent product / service lines.

His message to future financial leaders is clear. Visualize where you want your career to be in five, ten, and twenty years and identify the skills needed to get there. For aspiring CFOs, he highlights the importance of mastering accounting, reporting, M&A, taxes, treasury, internal controls, budgeting, forecasting, and fundraising. Also, he recommends exploring Finance in diverse contexts, such as rotating through public, private and nonprofit organizations, or accepting international assignments. This will broaden familiarity with different regulatory regimes, capital structures, and cultural attitudes toward risk. Finally, he stresses the value of finding a mentor and consistently going beyond expectations. In his experience, excellence creates opportunity more reliably than ambition alone.