stacking up

How Elon Musk's $44.9B Tesla pay package compares with the most generous plans for other U.S. CEOs

Here's how Texan Elon Musk's unprecedented pay package compares to his peers. Photo via Getty Images

Even though the median U.S. CEO pay package last year was nearly 200 times more than a worker in the middle of their company pay scales, Elon Musk's record-setting Tesla compensation dwarfs them by comparison.

Tesla shareholders on Thursday voted overwhelmingly in favor of restoring Musk's 10-year pay plan, valued by the company in April at $44.9 billion. It was worth more early in the year, but Tesla's stock value has fallen about 25% since then.

The all-stock package, approved by the board and shareholders in 2018, rewards Musk for hitting milestones that include raising Tesla's market value, pretax income and revenue.

It had been tossed out by a Delaware judge in January who said the process for approving it was “deeply flawed.” The court ruled that Musk controlled the company's board, and shareholders weren't fully informed.

But the company said Musk deserves the pay because he turned Tesla into the top-selling electric vehicle maker in the world, increasing its market value by billions.

Even with the reapproval vote, Musk won't get access to the stock options just yet. Tesla is expected to ask the judge to revisit her decision in light of the vote, and if she doesn't, the company probably will appeal the ruling to Delaware's Supreme Court. The whole process could take months.

No matter the outcome, Musk's package — the largest award to a CEO of a U.S. public company — is far above what's been granted to other chief executives. Here's how the package compares:

WITH THE MEDIAN CEO PAY

The median pay package for an S&P 500 U.S. CEO last year was $16.3 million, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. If you multiply that by 10 to get $163 million for a decade of work, Musk's earnings still would be 275 times greater.

In her January ruling that struck down the package, Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick wrote that Musk's package, then worth about $56 billion, was 250 times larger than the median peer CEO's pay plan.

WITH INDIVIDUAL CEOS

The top earner in the AP's survey was Hock Tan, CEO of artificial intelligence company Broadcom Inc. His package, mostly consisting of stock awards, was valued at about $162 million, when given to Tan at the start of fiscal 2023. Thanks to a surging stock price, Broadcom in March valued Tan’s pay package, plus older options he hadn’t yet cashed in, at $767.7 million. That's an amount easily eclipsed by Musk’s potential haul of 304 million shares worth almost $45 billion.

Other CEOs at the top of AP's survey are William Lansing of Fair Isaac Corp, ($66.3 million); Tim Cook of Apple Inc. ($63.2 million); Hamid Moghadam of Prologis Inc. ($50.9 million); and Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix ($49.8 million).

Technically, Musk got no compensation last year because he didn't get any stock options. But he stands to get even richer if his pay package goes through.

WITH TESLA WORKERS

It's difficult to calculate what Musk's annual pay would have been last year. The company says he got nothing. But if his compensation package makes it through the courts, his pay will be in the billions. According to the company's proxy filing this year, the median annual pay of a non-CEO Tesla employee last year was $45,811.

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A View From HETI

Recurrent Energy's Liberty Solar project near Houston is now operational, adding 134 megawatts of clean energy capacity to power 15,000 homes annually in the MISO market. Photo via recurrentenergy.com

A clean energy developer and operator of solar and energy storage assets has announced the completion and commercial operation of a Houston-area farm that will power 15,000 homes a year.

Recurrent Energy's Liberty Solar project outside of Houston has powered on and will expand solar energy capacity in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator market. Recurrent Energy is an Austin-based a subsidiary of Canadian Solar.

“Projects like Liberty Solar are instrumental to meeting the soaring demand for electricity in Texas,” Executive Director of Texas Solar Power Association Mark Stover says in a news release. "We commend Recurrent Energy for pushing through the development process and working with corporate buyers to deliver new, predictable, clean power to the MISO region of Texas.”

Liberty Solar is in Liberty County, which is about 50 miles northeast of Houston and will be a 134 megawatt solar project. Customers include Autodesk Inc., Biogen Inc., EMD Electronics (the U.S. and Canada electronics business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany), and Wayfair Inc.

“Investment in additional renewable capacity on the grid is essential to delivering more sustainable outcomes, and we believe that the Liberty Solar project will help make renewable energy more accessible in North America,” Joe Speicher, chief sustainability officer at Autodesk, adds in tje release. “Autodesk is committed to 100% renewable energy sourcing for our facilities, cloud services and hybrid workforce, and we are committed to leveraging our climate commitments to drive transformational change in our energy generation and deployment.”

Recurrent Energy celebrated the project by welcoming customers at Liberty Solar on October 23 for a guided tour and ribbon cutting ceremony.

“Liberty Solar is a fantastic project that expands Recurrent Energy’s project ownership in MISO,” Ismael Guerrero, CEO of Recurrent Energy, says in the release. “We are thrilled to complete this project on time and on budget in support of the renewable energy goals of our customers.”

Last year, Recurrent Energy scored $200 million in financing for the project, including $120 million in financing through Rabobank, Nord LB, and U.S. Bank in the form of construction debt, a letter-of-credit facility, and a term facility. In addition, U.S. Bancorp Impact Finance, a subsidiary of U.S. Bank, is providing $80 million in tax equity.

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