There are a couple of ways of summarizing what’s happened with Occidental Petroleum Corp. since CEO Vicki Hollub went all-in on buying Anadarko Petroleum Corp. last year. One would be that the deal trashed Oxy’s relationship with shareholders and saddled it with too much debt, leading to chronic underperformance and, when disaster struck, a massive dividend cut. An alternative take might be:
Ms. Hollub enhanced the value of Occidental’s portfolio of assets through the Anadarko acquisition, which strengthened Occidental’s long-term value proposition.
That second one comes from Oxy’s preliminary proxy statement, filed this week.
Here’s a quick sanity check by way of a chart. See which of the two assessments most closely aligns with this set of squiggles:
One detects some uneasiness on Oxy’s part. It took the trouble to lay out “realizable” pay for executives in its proxy; the idea being that the actual value of stock-based awards plummeted with Oxy’s price. Hence, while Hollub’s headline total compensation for 2019 clocks in at almost $16 million, the company calculates its value as of March 24 was a mere $4.4 million. Salaries for 2020 have been slashed (although these typically account for only 10-15% of total compensation). Plus, the proxy discloses that Oscar Brown, the head of strategy who played a leading role in the Anadarko deal, is no longer with the company.
Clearly, Hollub’s pay package isn’t worth what it was a couple of months ago. On the other hand, compared with a shareholder who just had most of their dividend taken away, the CEO is still being paid to wait. After all, the board presumably expects Hollub to preside over some sort of recovery in the share price (and, thereby, connected stock-based awards).
Moreover, while realizable pay may now…
Source: FuelFix
