Cook’s stock pile nets $213 million
Apple’s CEO cashes in on chunk of share package— much to delight of investors
CUPERTINO — Apple CEO Tim Cook has harvested a windfall from selling stock options, pulling in more than $200 million during his time at the helm of the Silicon Valley tech titan.
Apple investors aren’t complaining about Cook’s mammoth bounty, according to Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Campbell-based Creative Strategies, a market researcher.
“In fact, it’s quite the opposite,” Bajarin said. “Investors are very happy, and they want
Cook to push Apple harder to get even more profits.”
During the five years plus one day that Cook as been CEO, shares of Apple are up 100.2 percent — more than doubling their value over that time — while the S&P 500 Index is up 84.5 percent.
“Apple has always been more about rewarding executives based on performance,” said Michelle Leder, editor of Footnoted, a website that tracks public company filings. “People should be paid well if they perform well. I have a problem when a company is performing poorly and the CEO still gets rewarded handsomely.”
In 2011, Apple awarded Cook a stock option package that at the time was valued at $376.2 million, according to official company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That is the only stock option award Apple has given Cook since he stepped in for the ailing Steve Jobs in August 2011. Jobs died in October of that year.
Cook elected to sell big chunks of the stock option package in 2011, 2012 and 2013, SEC documents show. Through exercises of his options, Cook saw gains totaling $213.3 million over those three years.
Cook’s earnings from those sales totaled $13 million in 2011, $139.7 million in 2012 and $60.6 million in 2013. Cook didn’t exercise stock option grants in 2014 or 2015.
“When a company is performing well, you can certainly make an argument that a rising tide lifts all boats,” Leder said.
The SEC files show that Cook sold slightly fewer than 428,000 shares during those three years. The initial stock option package issued in 2011 to Cook consisted of 1 million shares.
In 2013, Apple tied a portion of Cook’s stock package to Apple’s ability to outperform the S&P 500.
Apple has paid Cook in other ways, as well. The tech giant has steadily raised Cook’s short-term compensation — a combination of his salary, cash incentives and miscellaneous other rewards.
Together, those three categories totaled $4.2 million in 2012, $4.3 million in 2013, $9.2 million in 2014 and $10.3 million in 2014, the SEC files show.
Under Cook’s leadership, Apple has marched into a powerful position for the future by amassing a vast stockpile of cash, according to SEC filings.
In September 2011, the end of Apple’s fourth fiscal quarter of that year, Apple had $81.57 billion in cash. At the end of June of this year, Apple was perched atop a mountain of $231.52 billion in cash.
“Tim Cook took the technology that Steve Jobs inspired and added better business practices, and in the process, Apple’s stock grew exponentially over the last five years,” Bajarin said. “Cook has Apple on a path that will take the stock up significantly over the next three to five years.”