Qualcomm Big Cheese Cristiano Amon's Pay Award Jumps 10%

Qualcomm's top dog Cristian Amon enjoyed a ten percent year-on-year bump in total financial compensation for fiscal 2024 that amounted to $25.91 million.

His base salary was unchanged at $1.35 million, stock awards dipped to $20 million, non-equity incentive plan jumped to $3.75 million from $540,000 and all other compensation came in at $828,490, according to the company's Notice of 2025 Annual Meeting of Stockholder and Proxy Statement document [PDF].

Amon rocked up at Qualcomm in 2004 and climbed the ranks as head of product management, then exec veep of Qualcomm Technologies and President of the CDMA division before entering the corporation's equivalent of the Oval Office in 2021.

His compensation growth slightly outpaced that of Qualcomm's own revenues in fiscal 2024 ended September 29 [PDF]. The business's top line grew 9 percent year-on-year to $38.96 billion. The megacorp also reported net income of $10.14 billion, up 20 percent, and scored record operating cash flow of $12.2 billion.

Highlights from the fiscal 12 months included inking a multiyear contract with Samsung to sell its Snapdragon system-on-chip semiconductors for use in the Galaxy phone, the product suite's X series was used to power upwards of 20 Copilot+ PC models, and the automotive design win pipeline swelled to circa $45 billion.

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According to shareholder results for fiscal 2023, 92 percent cast voted in favour of Say-on-Pay proposals, indicating that investors likely won't take issue with the latest pay awards.

As for the other members of the Qualcomm C-suite? CFO Akash Palkhiwala was awarded total compensation of $12.83 million, up from $8.5 million the year before, and CTO James Thompson got $12.94 million, compared to $10.7 million 12 months previous.

The median employee compensation package for the 49,000-strong workforce was $99,451, resulting in a ratio of 261 to one Cristiano Amon. In Qualcomm's fiscal 2023 it was 223.

It's tough at the top. ®