CFOVILLE

Kevin Hettrich

Kevin Hettrich started his journey to the CFO seat of battery maker QuantumScape working alongside the engineers as a product manager. He sees parallels between the two functions (more on that later).

For a CFO like Hettrich, who also worked in business operations before stepping into the role of finance chief in 2018, “it’s important to be self-aware,” he told CFO Brew. While Hettrich has had experience on the strategic side with investor interactions and annual operating plans, he’s brought in others to add depth to the accounting function, including a chief accounting officer.

QuantumScape is taking the next big step in its business, Hettrich said, and he’s readying the finance team to grow with it. The company is powering up plans for three industry sectors: electric vehicles, AI data centers, and aerospace and defense—combined, a very large addressable market. The company launched a pilot production line of its solid-state lithium-metal battery in February.

Hettrich discussed his nontraditional path to becoming a CFO, how product management resembles finance, and why QuantumScape is aiming for immediate scalability.

What were your primary responsibilities in product management, and how did that background prepare you for a finance leadership role?

The job of product manager is, what is the sweet spot of your product that solves all four things at the same time: something your customers want to buy, that you can develop, that our [operations] team can make, that you have the cash to make the whole thing solve? I actually think of finance and product management as being two of the tension-clearing organizations in the company, where you’re always taking in new information from one of those four spots and then trying to tweak the whole in response to that. Intellectually, [it’s] very interesting because you’re almost like a mini CEO.

“We’ve built the company knowing that it was a high risk,” Hettrich said.—AZ

      

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AUDITING

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QC 1000, A Firm’s System of Quality Control, first proposed by the PCAOB in 2022 and passed by the SEC in 2024, is “one of the most consequential standards that the board has ever adopted,” according to Chair Jim Logothetis.

But “consequential,” in the eyes of some audit firms, also translated to “burdensome.” Based on comment letters from stakeholders, the PCAOB proposed amendments to QC 1000, which, as of September 9, it has unanimously adopted. The amendments will next go to the SEC for approval.

EQCF scotched. One of the biggest changes the PCAOB made was removing the controversial external quality function (EQCF) from the standard. The EQCF mandated that firms that audit more than 100 issuers a year have an independent observer evaluate their judgments when reporting on their quality control (QC) systems.

Firms told the PCAOB that they were having trouble finding people to fulfill the EQCF, Thomson Reuters reported. Logothetis observed during the board’s September 9 meeting that the requirement might not, in practice, encourage greater independence, as each firm “selects, engages, compensates, and can remove the individual performing the EQCF role.”

The PCAOB’s acting chief auditor said the amendments “reduc[e] unnecessary implementation burdens.”—CV

      

FINANCIAL MARKETS

Morning Brew Inc

If you’ve made it this far in life without knowing what “tokenization” or “perps” means, then we’re jealous. Unfortunately, now might be the time to tune in.

The world of investing, prediction markets, and crypto are all converging into an unholy trinity as everything turns into one giant casino. Perpetual futures, aka “perps,” are a major part of that transformation.

Perps are essentially futures contracts that never expire, but don’t actually give investors ownership of the underlying asset they track. Kalshi first got approval to list perps tied to digital assets back in May, and since then, $44 billion in volume of perp contracts has been traded on the site, according to CNBC. On Thursday, Kalshi won approval from the CFTC to roll out perps tied to gold and silver, arguing that the resurgence of inflation is making precious metals a more relevant investment than ever.

But it isn’t just prediction markets ushering in a new era of finance. Traditional stock exchanges, which have realized that risk-hungry retail traders are a growing customer base, are trying to jump on the crypto bandwagon as well.

One CEO called tokenizing his company’s stock “contemptible” and “vile,” Brew Markets reported.—LB

      

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market forces

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat: 3.4%. That’s how much the Consumer Price Index rose in August from a year earlier, unchanged from July. That reading increases the possibility that the Federal Reserve may boost interest rates next week. (the Wall Street Journal)

Quote: “If I had to worry about either an AI escaping the lab and killing millions of people and a virus escaping and killing millions, it is no contest. The worry is the virus.”—Oren Etzioni, University of Washington professor emeritus and founding CEO of the Allen Institute for AI (the New York Times)

Read: Bye bye, cruddy dorms. With college athletes earning money from their fame, thanks to “name, image, and likeness,” or NIL, deals, some newly wealthy football players are buying expensive homes in university towns. (WSJ)

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