Eleven Months, Then the Outsider

The letter agreement was signed on November 25, 2025. Nine days later Daktronics, Inc. told the market what its board had decided: Ramesh Jayaraman, an operator out of Bosch Home Comfort, would become president and chief executive officer on February 1, 2026.

The seat had gone eleven months without a permanent occupant.

Reece Kurtenbach - chairman, president and chief executive - separated from Daktronics effective March 5, 2025. Bradley Wiemann carried the title on an interim basis through the third fiscal quarter. And three years before any of that, in an exhibit filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company that supplies much of the big screen in American sport wrote the worst sentence a manufacturer can write about itself.

A Sentence In The Filing

December 12, 2022. Reporting its fiscal second quarter, Daktronics disclosed that it had temporarily lifted its credit commitment by $10.0 million, then explained why that was not enough. Because the increase was short-term, and because the company could not be certain it would avoid needing liquidity beyond its current sources, management concluded that the conditions "raise substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern."

Cash, restricted cash and marketable securities: $7.7 million. A year earlier, $61.6 million. Behind that balance sat a backlog of $463.1 million - orders already won, and now to be funded.

Relief came on May 11, 2023: a $75 million senior secured facility from JPMorgan Chase and a $25 million convertible note from major shareholder Alta Fox Capital Management, whose founder Connor Haley described a business with "significant secular tailwinds and meaningful earnings growth."

The capital bought time. It did not answer who would run the company.

The Board Reached Outside

Jayaraman arrived with twenty-five years in global operations and no public-company chief executive title behind him. He had most recently run Americas integration for Bosch Home Comfort as senior vice president, after a series of senior roles across Bosch's global Energy and Building Technologies portfolio. Before Bosch he led the Asia Pacific business for Harman Professional Solutions, and served as managing director for Ariston Thermo Group's APAC operations. Earlier came commercial, operational and strategy roles at Tyco/ADT spread across the United States, China, India and the broader Asia Pacific. He holds an MBA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Delhi College of Engineering.

Chairman Andrew D. Siegel set out the board's reasoning plainly: that history of leading significant change at large-scale industrial technology organizations was, he said, "the right leadership profile as our transformation gains steam."

Jayaraman's own note read like a man who had known the company from the other side of a purchase order. "I am humbled and excited by the opportunity to lead Daktronics into its next chapter of growth and evolution," he said, adding that he had been "well aware of Daktronics since my time at Harman International."

Knowing a business from outside is not the same as owning its numbers. The first set landed thirty-one days after he sat down.

The Quarter That Preceded Him

Daktronics' fiscal 2026 third quarter closed on January 31, 2026 - the day before Jayaraman's first day. On March 4 the results went out under his name regardless: sales of $181.9 million, up 21.6 percent; operating income of $1.9 million against a $3.6 million operating loss a year earlier; orders of $201.1 million; backlog up 25.3 percent to $342.3 million.

He claimed the profit improvement in specific terms - "more than tripling adjusted operating income through value-based pricing and operational efficiencies" - and pointed to "the commencement of five MLB stadium projects with planned installation this spring."

The same release carried the cost of the changeover it described. Daktronics booked $2.1 million in the quarter for management transition, advisory and legal expenses. Gross margin slipped to 24.0 percent from 24.6 percent on revenue mix. And the finance seat beside his was provisional, and still is: Howard Atkins signs as acting chief financial officer, the same Atkins who chaired the board committee that ran the 2023 financing.

What The Full Year Showed

The fiscal year ended May 2, 2026. Net sales of $838.7 million, a record, up 10.9 percent. Orders of $860.8 million, a record, up 10.2 percent. Operating margin of 7.3 percent against 4.4 percent. Earnings of $0.92 a share, against a loss of $0.21 the year before.

Atkins credited the year with "a 290 basis point increase in operating margin." Jayaraman's framing was narrower and more useful: "record net sales and orders, reflecting efficient backlog conversion, steady customer demand" and effective sales practices across the portfolio.

Live Events had won five of five Major League Baseball stadium installations dating back to the third quarter of fiscal 2025. Transportation posted record orders, led by aviation. International recorded its own best orders quarter of the year.

Then the turn. Fourth-quarter orders fell 7.7 percent against a prior-year quarter the company itself called exceptional - one in which orders had accelerated in advance of pricing increases. The number the fourth quarter had to beat was built partly out of demand pulled forward.

The Numbers He Signed For

Jayaraman has now put his name to a three-year target: 7 to 10 percent compound revenue growth, 10 to 12 percent operating margin, and 17 to 20 percent return on invested capital by fiscal 2028. Set against fiscal 2026's 7.3 percent operating margin, the middle number asks for roughly three more points.

The starting position is a book of orders. "We are well positioned with a $356.2 million multi-quarter product backlog," he said in June, "and a strong pipeline across all business segments" - and the company is, he said, "tracking well toward our fiscal 2028 targets."

Three and a half years earlier, Daktronics had $7.7 million in the bank and a line in an SEC exhibit questioning whether it would continue at all. The board that came through that spent eleven months deciding who to hand the company to, then chose someone who had only ever watched it from a competitor's side of the industry. His first full fiscal year as chief executive starts now - with 2,700 employees, a $356.2 million backlog, an acting CFO, and a margin target that the record year he just posted does not yet reach.