Loss-making Warner Bros Discovery’s CEO pay rises to $50 million in 2023
12:17 pm Friday, April 19th, 2024
(Reuters) – Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s annual compensation rose nearly 27% to $49.7 million in 2023, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed on Friday.
The rise in pay was partly related to the loss-making media conglomerate’s decision to align its executive compensation to focus more on debt reduction and free cash flow.
Warner Bros Discovery reported an 86% jump in free cash flow to $6.16 billion in 2023, partially because of lower spending during the Hollywood strikes that had paralyzed production for months.
The company reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss in February, pressured by the decline of cable TV, a weak advertising market and the fallout from the Hollywood strikes.
Zaslav received stock awards of $23.1 million in 2023, compared with $12 million in 2022. Shares of the company rose 20% last year.
Although Zaslav’s pay rose from 2022, it dwarfs his 2021 compensation of $246.5 million. (This story has been corrected to say that the free cash flow ‘partially,’ not ‘largely,’ benefited from lower spending during the Hollywood strikes in paragraph 3)
(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese; Editing by Ravi Prakash Kumar and Devika Syamnath)
