SiriusXM CEO James Meyer pulled down a healthy $18.8 million in 2019; other SiriusXM executives also took home multimillion-dollar salaries with massive bonuses.
The earnings information was revealed in an SEC filing, which was shared with Digital Music News. Meyer’s “annual total compensation” during 2019 was exactly $18,778,831, according to the SEC document; he took home about $17.6 million in 2018 and over $9.6 million in 2017.
Significantly, his base salary hovered around $2 million in each of these years, and the lion’s share of his income derived from bonuses and stock awards.
Scott A. Greenstein, SiriusXM’s president and chief content officer, received more than $4.5 million in 2019, down from nearly $20 million (due to hefty stock and option awards) in 2018.
SiriusXM President of Sales, Marketing and Operations Jennifer C. Witz’s 2019 salary exceeded $16 million (also predominantly due to stock and option awards), SVP and CFO David J. Frear collected approximately $4.2 million in 2019, and EVP, General Counsel and Secretary Patrick L. Donnelly nabbed $10.9 million on the year.
In total, the listed Sirius XM executives earned more than $54.56 million in 2019.
However, as much of this compensation was performance-based, and derived from bonuses and stock options—all but CEO James Meyer had a base salary under $2 million—their 2020 earnings could be dramatically lower, given the economic strain of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
An array of other noteworthy information, including executive severance package details and median employee pay, is also featured in the report. 2019 marked the 10th consecutive year in which SiriusXM has netted more than one million additional subscribers. The company returned somewhere in the ballpark of $2.4 billion to its shareholders via stock repurchases and dividend payments in 2019 as well.
At the time of this writing, SiriusXM’s stock, traded under the symbol SIRI, was hovering around $5.40 per share, considerably more than the $4.11 per-share price it touched during the immediate aftermath of the coronavirus-fueled market downturn.
It’s good to be rich!