Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings already has a reason to look forward to 2018: He’s set to receive nearly $30 million in stock options, on top of his annual $700,000 salary, according to an SEC filing on Thursday.
Hastings will pull in $28.7 million in shares of NFLX next year, a healthy jump from the $21 million he received in 2017. The exec is being rewarded for a banner year for the streaming giant, with company shares increasing more than 50 percent since Jan 1. Netflix also crossed the 100 million subscriber threshold during 2017, ending the year at about 110 million customers across the globe. With a net worth estimated at $2.2 billion, Hastings joined the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans back in October.
Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos is also being handsomely rewarded, grabbing a $12 million salary — a major leap from the $1 million he pulled in this year. He’ll also receive $14.25 million in stock options. Sarandos has been leading the company’s charge into original content, overseeing the launch of new series like “Glow,” “Ozark,” and “Marvel’s The Punisher.” The new programming comes at a cost, however, with the company raising $1.6 billion in debt to fund its $8 billion content spend for 2018.
Chief Product Officer Greg Peters will make a combined $12.6 million between his salary and stock options next year; Chief Financial Officer David Wells will make $2.8 million in salary and $2.45 million in stock options; and general counsel David Hyman will make a combined $5.78 million in 2018.
The filing doesn’t include bonuses or other forms of compensation the execs might receive.
Shares of Netflix closed at $192.71 a share on Thursday, up about 3.5 percent on the day.
6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post
The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”
The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."
The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”
The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.
OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.
Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.
Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.