Tech —

Tim Cook and other Apple execs miss out on bonus pay after disappointing 2016

Executive earnings were down more than $2 million compared to 2015.

Apple's executive pay for 2016.
Enlarge / Apple's executive pay for 2016.
Apple

Apple raked in $215.6 billion in sales in 2016, but it wasn't enough to keep the company from reporting its first year-over-year sales decline since 2001. According to the company's definitive proxy statement filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company's sales declined from $233.7 billion in 2015, and its operating income likewise fell from $71.2 billion in 2015 to $60.0 billion in 2016. The decline in these two metrics was enough to significantly cut incentive-based pay for Tim Cook and a number of other high-level Apple executives.

The SEC report lists the earnings of six "named executives," including CEO Tim Cook, CFO Luca Maestri, Retail SVP Angela Ahrendts, Internet Software and Services SVP Eddy Cue, Hardware Engineering SVP Dan Riccio, and General Counsel Bruce Sewell. Cook's base salary is set at $3 million, while the other executives' base pay is $1 million. Each executive has the opportunity to earn up to four times his or her base salary if the company meets net sales and operating income goals.

Incentive payout targets versus where Apple fell in 2016.
Incentive payout targets versus where Apple fell in 2016.
Apple

Last year, all of the executives maxed out their potential cash bonuses—Cook received an $8 million cash bonus based on his then-$2 million base salary, and the other named executives earned $4 million based on their $1 million base salaries. This year, Cook earned $5.3 million and other executives earned about $1.8 million, a little less than twice each executive's base salary. Each of the executives aside from Cook received $20 million in stock, $8 million of which is incentive-based (though the way these incentives are awarded depends on Apple's stock performance relative to other companies rather than its revenue).

Apple's revenue fell this year mostly because the iPhone declined—the iPhone 6S was unable to repeat the iPhone 6's success. Sales in China fell precipitously after surging in 2015, and unexpectedly strong sales for the iPhone SE lowered the iPhone's average selling price. Revenue from services like the App Store and Apple Music grew at a steady clip throughout the year, but it wasn't nearly enough to make up for the iPhone's stumble or the smaller year-over-year dips in iPad and Mac sales.

For 2017, Apple will be making its executives' pay even more dependent on performance—specifically, up to 50 percent of "long-term equity incentives" (i.e. stock) will rely on the company's performance in the coming fiscal year. The company's earnings call for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 will happen on January 31, and the company has projected revenue between $76 and $78 billion, slightly beating the $75.9 billion it earned in the first quarter of 2016.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham

Channel Ars Technica