Ulta Beauty shares were knocked sharply lower on Friday after the cosmetics retailer’s yearly earnings guidance missed Wall Street’s target. The company also said CEO Mary Dillon will step down from the top role.
The company late Thursday forecast fiscal 2021 per-share earnings of $8.85 to $9.30, which includes the impact of about $850 million in share buybacks. Analysts were looking for earnings of $10.61 per share, according to data compiled by Refinitiv. Ulta’s revenue forecast was $7.2 billion to $7.3 billion, below the average analyst forecast of $7.32 billion.
The company in a separate announcement said Dillon will transition to the role of executive chair of its board of directors, with President Dave Kimbell to succeed her as CEO.
Shares dropped 8.5% to close at $318.15. They fell by as much as 12% to an intraday low of $306.06. The stock has gained about 11% this year and has climbed by 54% over the past 12 months.
“Throughout my time with the company, I have worked closely with our board on strategic succession plans, and I believe now is the right time to begin a CEO transition,” said Dillon in the statement, noting that she had led the company for eight years. Kimbell joined Ulta Beauty as chief marketing officer in 2014.
For the fourth quarter ended January 30, Ulta posted adjusted earnings were $3.41 per share, down from $3.83 per share a year ago but higher than expectations of $2.35 per share. Revenue of $2.2 billion was ahead of Wall Street’s projection of $2.08 billion but down from $2.31 billion a year earlier.
Dillon will be nominated to stand for election to the company’s board of directors at its 2021 annual stockholders meeting to be held on June 2.
Ulta Beauty shares were knocked sharply lower on Friday after the cosmetics retailer’s yearly earnings guidance missed Wall Street’s target. The company also said CEO Mary Dillon will step down from the top role.
The company late Thursday forecast fiscal 2021 per-share earnings of $8.85 to $9.30, which includes the impact of about $850 million in share buybacks. Analysts were looking for earnings of $10.61 per share, according to data compiled by Refinitiv. Ulta’s revenue forecast was $7.2 billion to $7.3 billion, below the average analyst forecast of $7.32 billion.
The company in a separate announcement said Dillon will transition to the role of executive chair of its board of directors, with President Dave Kimbell to succeed her as CEO.
Shares dropped 11% to a low of $308.32 as trading in the regular session got underway. The stock had gained 21% so far in 2021 and has climbed by nearly 68% over the past 12 months.
“Throughout my time with the company, I have worked closely with our board on strategic succession plans, and I believe now is the right time to begin a CEO transition,” said Dillion in the statement, noting that she had led the company for eight years. Kimbell joined Ulta Beauty as chief marketing officer in 2014.
For the fourth quarter ended January 30, Ulta posted adjusted earnings were $3.41 per share, down from $3.83 per share a year ago but higher than expectations of $2.35 per share. Revenue of $2.2 billion was ahead of Wall Street’s projection of $2.08 billion but down from $2.31 billion a year earlier.
Dillon will be nominated to stand for election to the company’s board of directors at its 2021 annual stockholders meeting to be held on June 2.
CEOs like Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella are among the top 100 most overpaid CEOs, according to a new report from As You Sow.
It’s no secret that CEOs of S&P 500 companies make good money. However, As You Sow’s list doesn’t rank by the size of a CEO’s salary. Instead, the corporate responsibility non-profit uses different metrics to identify whether or not a CEO is being overpaid.
To do this, the study took three main factors into account: the amount of extra dollars a CEO receives based on past company performance and pay, the number of shareholders who voted against a CEO’s pay package, and the ratio comparing the executive’s compensation to the company’s median employee pay. The latter was weighed less heavily.
Coincidentally, the highest salary on the list happens to belong to the most overpaid CEO: Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, who receives a pay of $280,621,552, according to the report. To compare, the median pay of Alphabet workers sits at $258,708, which is a CEO to worker pay ratio of 1,085 to one.
Pichai is being paid an excess of $266,698,263, according to As You Sow.
To compare, the median employee pay at Facebook is $247,883. This amounts to a CEO to worker pay ratio of 94 to one, lower than both Microsoft and Alphabet’s.
However, the list wasn’t just dominated by tech leaders. Bob Iger, the former CEO of the Walt Disney Company, Lachlan Murdoch of Fox Corporation, and Miguel Patricio of the Kraft Heinz Company were all listed among the top 30 most overpaid CEOs.
And according to the study, companies that have consistently graced the list are performing worse than those that have never been mentioned. As You Sow has published this report annually since 2015, and nine CEOs have made the list every year, amounting to a total pay of $2 billion. However, these nine businesses have seen a lower annualized shareholder return compared to S&P 500 companies that have never made the overpaid CEO list.
These nine companies include: Discovery, Walt Disney, Comcast, AT&T, Goldman Sachs, IBM, McKesson, Ralph Lauren, and Regeneron.
This consistent overpaying of CEOs can signal several concerns, specifically “poor accountability, weak governance, and lack of concern for shareholder interests,” the study notes.
However, this overcompensation issue may soon be changing as more shareholders are beginning to vote against these hefty CEO paychecks, according to Rosanna Landis Weaver, the report’s author.
“We might be going into a spring where we see higher votes against pay, particularly at companies that try to insulate their executive compensation from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Weaver told Insider.
These were the top 30 most overpaid CEOs, according to As You Sow’s new report:
