Lucid’s CEO pay of $379 million has drawn criticism from Musk
Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson appears at The Quail, A Motorsport Gathering on August 18, 2023 in Carmel, California. Matt Jelonik – Getty Images
It’s rare for CEOs to berate the outlandish pay packages of their peers — mostly because they throw rocks from greenhouses — but Lucid Motors CEO Peter Rawlinson drew sharp criticism from electric vehicle rival Elon Musk on Monday after earning Named the highest paid CEO in the auto industry.
“Beware of any company where driving compensation is not tied to performance,” said the Tesla CEO. books On X in response to a post about Rawlinson’s pay.
Rawlinson received a $379 million compensation package in 2022 for his role at luxury electric car maker Lucid, including a $575,000 base salary, $5.5 million in stock options and $373 million in stock awards, according to a new survey of CEO compensation. Executives from Automotive News. and equal.
Despite Musk’s criticism, Rawlinson earned his hefty paycheck after hitting Lucid’s market capitalization targets early last year, SEC filings show. Lucid, like 88% of the 250 largest publicly traded US companies, now uses performance-based compensation for at least a portion of its executive salaries.
“One of the reasons we see pay-for-performance models as preferred is that they are generally viewed more positively by shareholders, to the extent that achieving financial performance is linked to shareholder value creation,” Noah Kaplan, Managing Director, Bank of England. management consulting firm FW Cook said luck trend in March.
However, it is reasonable for Musk to believe that Rawlinson’s pay was not performance-related. After all, Lucid stock is down more than 82% in 2022, and the company generated total revenue of just $608.2 million. Also, when you compare Rawlinson’s pay to his peers in the auto industry, his latest compensation package looks impressive. Rawlinson’s total compensation in 2022 was 11 times greater than the $34 million earned by GM’s highest-paid automaker CEO Mary Barra, and 21 times greater than the $18.3 million earned by Ford CEO Jim Farley.
CEOs at electric car startups don’t get anywhere close to Rawlinson’s total, either. Robert Scaring, CEO of Rivian Automotive, earned close to $1 million in 2022, though his company is now worth more than $22 billion, more than 50% more than Lucid Motors’ roughly $14 billion.
For comparison, Musk didn’t make any direct money from his role as CEO of Tesla last year, but the billionaire came under fire for the $23 billion bonus he received in 2021 after hitting performance targets for both earnings and rising stock prices — a deal that was unprecedented. when it was hit in 2018. As Tesla’s largest shareholder, Musk continues to benefit greatly from the company’s stock price growth.
