A justified lion’s share to the leader; Nadella took $42.9 million for FY19

For the fiscal year 2019, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earned 66 per cent higher in total compensation than the last fiscal year at $42.9 million. He received a base salary jump of $1 million and a significant rise in stocks.

Under his leadership, the company is said to have strengthened the trust with the costumers. In a proxy statement issued by Microsoft’s independent directors on Monday, it said that Nadella led Microsoft to enter and expand into new technologies and markets successfully.

In 2014, when Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft from Steve Ballmer, he is supposed to have taken the highest earnings in a fiscal year ever at $84.3 million in a year.

The company also added, “For the fiscal year 2019, the annual total compensation for the median employee of the Company (other than our CEO) was $172,512.”

In the form of share repurchases and dividends, the company earned a return of total $30.9 billion in the previous fiscal year, which was a record financial performance of the company till now.

Since Nadella took over the company, Microsoft’s market capitalisation increased from $302 billion to $811 billion, a record increase of $509 billion.

Also, the company in the filing said, “Microsoft’s relative TSR was in the 97th percentile, resulting in Nadella earning and vesting in the maximum 900,000 shares.”

Under his leadership, the company bought $19.54 billion in shares back, a buyback worth $10.72 billion in the last fiscal year.

“The new share repurchase programme, which has no expiration date, may be terminated at any time. The dividend is payable on December 12 to shareholders of record on November 21, 2019. The ex-dividend date will be November 20, 2019,” the company said.

Microsoft has witnessed significant growth in its Surface laptop and Cloud segments. The company posted net income of $13.2 billion and a revenue of $33.7 billion for its fourth quarter this financial year.

Microsoft returned its shareholders $7.7 billion in the form of repurchases and dividends in the fourth quarter of FY19. The company is valued at around $1 trillion and is growing significantly under the leadership of Nadella.