Four Days, Then the Whole Company

On April 15, 2024, the board of Jabil Inc. put its chief executive on paid leave. The Form 8-K filed three days later gives the reason in a single clause - an investigation related to corporate policies - and then adds a sentence written to steady the market: the conduct that prompted the review "does not relate to, and does not impact, the Company's financial statements or financial reporting."

Four days after the leave began, the same board handed the company to the man who kept those financial statements. Michael Dastoor, Jabil's chief financial officer, became interim chief executive effective April 19, 2024. He did not give up the finance seat. For thirty-one days he held both.

Then the investigation closed, and on May 20 the board took the word "interim" off his title.

The Succession That Did Not Hold

Jabil had not been careless about this. On November 4, 2022, the company announced a chief executive succession with six months of runway: Kenny Wilson would take over on May 1, 2023, after working alongside Mark Mondello, the chairman and chief executive of more than a decade. Lead independent director Steve Raymund described a process refined "over the past two years" - deliberate, telegraphed, complete.

Wilson lasted eleven and a half months.

Both men had joined Jabil in 2000. One was prepared for the top job across two announced years. The other got it in four days, with no search, no shortlist and no outside candidate.

The Controller'S Route Up

Dastoor's path to the chair ran through the back office rather than the business units. He joined Jabil in 2000 after seven years as regional chief financial officer at Inchcape plc, and before that six years auditing across the United Kingdom and Europe as a chartered accountant of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. His degrees in finance and accounting are from the University of Mumbai. Inside Jabil he was senior vice president and controller from 2010 to 2018, then chief financial officer from 2018 to 2024 - fourteen years signing the numbers before he was asked to own them.

That is the unglamorous route. It is also why a board could move in four days: the person who had certified every filing for six years needed no introduction to the auditors, the lenders or the customers.

His first statement as chief executive ran three sentences and promised nothing about strategy. "I am humbled by the trust that our Board has placed in me," he said, adding that he was "fully committed to delivering results for our customers, our employees, and our investors."

The Hole He Inherited

He also inherited a company that had just sold a large piece of itself. In September 2023, under Wilson, Jabil signed a definitive agreement to divest its Mobility business - consumer-electronics component operations, mainly in Chengdu and Wuxi - to BYD Electronic for $2.2 billion in cash. The strategic logic was defensible and the money was real. The arithmetic was punishing. Jabil's revenue peaked at $34.702 billion in fiscal 2023. In fiscal 2024 it fell to $28.883 billion, a drop of $5.819 billion.

Fiscal 2025, his first full year in the chair, was worse where shareholders look. Diluted earnings per share had printed $11.17 in fiscal 2024, a figure lifted by the divestiture, and fell to $5.92 in fiscal 2025. Net income dropped from $1.388 billion to $657 million. In the nine months to May 2025 the company booked $144 million of restructuring, severance and related charges.

A chief executive appointed in an emergency, running a company with a $5.8 billion revenue hole and earnings cut in half. That was the position entering fiscal 2026.

The Numbers Turned

Then they turned, and the turn was not gradual.

In the second quarter of fiscal 2026, reported on March 18, Jabil posted $8.282 billion of revenue against $6.728 billion a year earlier, with core diluted earnings of $2.69 a share against $1.94. Dastoor credited breadth rather than a single bet. The quarter was "broad-based, reflecting the strength of our diversified portfolio," he said, led by "continued momentum in Intelligent Infrastructure, where demand remains robust across cloud and data center infrastructure, networking and communications, and capital equipment."

Three months later the third quarter carried $8.751 billion of revenue, $445 million of operating income and core earnings of $3.16 a share. "AI infrastructure demand remains extremely strong, and our full-year AI-related revenue outlook is now meaningfully higher," he said on June 17, 2026. He had raised guidance in consecutive quarters.

The full-year target he set for fiscal 2026 is the number that closes the loop: $35 billion of revenue, a 5.8 percent core operating margin, core earnings of $12.70 a share and adjusted free cash flow above $1.4 billion. Thirty-five billion dollars is more than Jabil booked in fiscal 2023 - and it is more on a base that no longer contains the Mobility business at all.

What The Model Is For

His own account of the recovery stays deliberately flat. "Our diversified model continues to work, allowing us to support strong growth while also driving higher margins and strong free cash flow," he said in June, before lifting the fiscal 2026 outlook for revenue, core operating margin, core earnings and free cash flow in one move.

That claim is testable, and the quarter tested it. AI infrastructure was the engine, but the same release credits "better-than-expected performance in areas of the portfolio that had previously been under pressure, particularly in Automotive and Connected Living" - the businesses that were dragging when he took the seat.

The buying has run alongside the operating. In the nine months to May 31, 2026, Jabil spent $891 million acquiring treasury stock and $852 million net on business and intangible asset acquisitions, including Hanley Energy Group. Total assets reached $23.819 billion against $18.543 billion at the fiscal 2025 close. Accounts payable rose to $11.908 billion from $7.937 billion - the balance-sheet signature of a manufacturer building at speed.

Still The Accountant

In January 2026 he stood on the other side of a board announcement, welcoming a new chairman and two new directors as the company marked sixty years. "As we mark 60 years of Jabil innovation, their perspectives will be invaluable to our efforts to drive long-term value for our stakeholders," he said. The chairman appointed that day was Steve Raymund - the same lead independent director who had explained the two-year succession plan in 2022, now chairing the board whose chosen successor lasted under a year.

Dastoor is 60. He has sat on the board of Columbus McKinnon Corporation since May 2021, chairing its audit committee until July 2024. Jabil's guidance now reaches into fiscal 2027, about which he has said only that the company feels "very good about the setup for fiscal 2027."

He was handed the company in four days on the strength of fourteen years of signatures. Fiscal 2027 is the first year he will have planned from the beginning.