HP CEO Pay For 2023 = 270,315 Printer Cartridges

The Reg family would like to extend our condolences to HP CEO Enrique Lores after his headline financial compensation package for 2023 declined more than 7 percent year-on-year to $19.46 million.

It is tough at the top, as we've pointed out before, but someone has to step into those Italian leather slip-ons, slide onto the corporate chaise longue, and spin gold from straw. Or in the case of HP, sell printer ink.

According to the Summary Compensation Table (SCT) contained in HP Inc's 2024 proxy shareholder statement [PDF] published this week, Lores got a base salary bump of $50,000 to $1.3 million, stock and options awards of $15.86 million, and a non-equity annual incentive plan of almost $2 million. All other compensation – security and travel – was a little more than $300,000.

However, following a reconciliation of the SCT, HP says that Lores was "actually paid" $12,858,597. And this was higher than the $11,845,017 he was "actually paid" in 2022. Our overly grand gesture of goodwill in the opening paragraph was superfluous.

Shareholders will get the chance to attend the Annual General Meeting on April 22 to vote on various things including to have their say on pay and elect the 12 directors listed in the proxy statement.

Fiscal '23 was a tough 12 months for HP as revenues plunged 15 percent to $53.7 billion. Total expenses, however, were down by $8 billion to $50.26 billion, causing net income to grow by $131 million to $3.262 billion. Consumer/commercial PCs and printing all recorded shrinkage.

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• Average Adobe staffer makes $170k a year, and 185 of them = 1 CEO

PC makers, including HP, are now praying that on-device AI will improve their lot in 2024 and are helping to inflate the hype bubble. Just months ago analysts and vendors were struggling to define the AI PC, with IDC going so far as to say that use cases had yet to be articulated.

On the printer front, HP is fighting back against the incursion of evil remanufacturers that are pinching its hard-won supplies margins, although not all customers are happy with the methods and some are deploying lawyers. HP would very much like to lock all of you into its ink subscriptions.

Investors can also expect HP to continue the cost-cutting campaign it embarked upon in fiscal 2023 that was expected to see up to 6,000 staff ditched.

Talking of staff, the average pay for an HPer in the prior financial year was $67,816, meaning a CEO pay ratio of 287:1. HP employed 58,000 staff at the end of last year.

Lores would no doubt like shareholders to know what a good investment he is, because we all know how much he hates bad investments. ®

Bootnote

We calculated the ink based on an HP 206 printer cartridge, selling for $71.99 per unit.