By Senad Karaahmetovic
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) said it didn’t grant its CEO Andy Jassy “any equity awards” during 2022.
“Our CEO’s Compensation Actually Paid (as defined by the SEC) for 2022 was negative $148 million, largely attributable to the 2022 decline in value of restricted stock units scheduled to vest over the next 8 years, while his 2022 realized compensation declined by 25% from 2021,” the company said in a filing.
The decision not to grant Jessy any new stock in 2022 was made after the company “engaged in extensive outreach” with the shareholders, including “holding one-on-one or small group meetings with most of our 20 largest shareholders.”
The company says it remains committed to its executive compensation structure. While Jassy didn’t get new stock in 2022, recently promoted CEOs of Amazon’s e-commerce and cloud businesses were awarded over $40 million in 2022 compensation.
Jassy’s 2021 award, originally worth $214M, “is intended to represent most of his compensation for the coming years,” Amazon said. The CEO still generated $31.9 million from those older grants that were vested last year.
In an annual shareholder letter, Jassy reaffirmed his belief that the recent cost-cutting activities will pay off. He also discussed “short-term headwinds” facing AWS and noted that companies “are being more cautious in spending given the challenging, current macroeconomic conditions.”
“Despite 2022 being one of the harder macroeconomic years in recent memory, and with some of our own operating challenges to boot, we still found a way to grow demand (on top of the unprecedented growth we experienced in the first half of the pandemic),” he wrote.
“I’m optimistic that we’ll emerge from this challenging macroeconomic time in a stronger position than when we entered it.”
He also added that Grocery is “a big growth opportunity for Amazon.”