Apple execs reap more than $19M each in vested stock bonus

Apple's executive team, including head of retail Angela Ahrendts and SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, on Sunday saw batches of performance based restricted stock unit awards vest, netting each common shares worth more than $19 million.

According to a series of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings made public on Tuesday, the RSUs vested on Oct. 1 originate from an Apple incentive plan dating back to 2014.

Along with Ahrendts and Cue, Apple SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi, CFO Luca Maestri, SVP of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio, SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller, SVP and General Counsel Bruce Sewell and COO Jeff Williams each saw awards converted into 125,494 common shares. At the start of trading on Monday, the package was worth nearly $19.4 million.

As is standard operating procedure, Apple withheld 68,686 shares from awards received by Ahrendts, Maestri, Schiller and Williams to satisfy tax laws. Cue, Federighi, Riccio and Sewell saw 62,929 shares withheld for the same reason.

Under terms of the award, a percentage of 68,576 RSUs were scheduled to vest based on Apple's total shareholder return relative to other companies in the S&P 500 from Sept. 28, 2014 through Sept. 30, 2017. TSR is calculated based on AAPL share priced during the three-year period, with initial value pegged at $100.66. Adjusted for dividends, Apple's ending value as of Sept. 30 was calculate to be $166.62, meaning the TSR was 65.53 percent.

Apple's TSR ranked the company in 92nd of the 451 entities included in the S&P 500 during the evaluation period, good enough to place in the 80th percentile. The plan called for 200 percent of the 68,576 RSUs to vest had Apple stock placed in the 85th percentile. Instead, the executives saw their award vest on a straight line basis calculated off the next vesting percentage, which was 100 percent for the 55th percentile.

36 Comments

macxpress 5910 comments · 16 Years

About 7 years ago

Sorry...Eddy Cue isn't worth a penny to Apple.

BittySon 75 comments · 8 Years

Those two aren't worth it. Maybe Craig, Phil and Jeff.
Steve would be rolling in his grave. Or is.

StrangeDays 12960 comments · 8 Years

macxpress said:

Sorry...Eddy Cue isn't worth a penny to Apple.

I see this comment a bit on forums, but I’m curious — as a random guy on a rumors site, how do you think you know this? You don’t work for Apple at all let alone at his executive level, so how on earth would you be qualified to weigh in on his actual performance and deliverables. I imagine that’s something only Cook and the board would be in a position to evaluate. And considering how rumors and the telephone game work, no, reading some rumor stories on a fan site doesn’t count for jack.

BittySon said:

Those two aren't worth it. Maybe Craig, Phil and Jeff.
Steve would be rolling in his grave. Or is.

Oh yeah? How close were you to Jobs? How long did you two know each other? Amazing.

Meanwhile, Apple is bigger and more successful than ever. Which is what performance bonuses are tied to (and not fansite popular opinions, thankfully).

tmay 6455 comments · 11 Years

BittySon said:

Those two aren't worth it. Maybe Craig, Phil and Jeff.
Steve would be rolling in his grave. Or is.

Ahrendts is delivering one of the best retail experiences in the industry, you see it in every Apple store, and retail continues to be a huge win for Apple.

Eddie Cue isn't my cup of tea, but so far, I'm not seeing the negatives that some others do, maybe because almost everything that Eddie does is behind the scenes.

I have no idea what Steve does in his grave, but rolling around doesn't seem like what he would waste his afterlife doing, if you believe in that sort of thing, and I don't.