No wonder Time Warner Cable have to raise their rates.
Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt, 61, took home a salary of $1.25 million, up 25 percent from $1 million in 2009, and a performance-based bonus that rose 33 percent to $8.3 million. No wonder they have to raise cable rates.
He received stock valued at $3.1 million on the day it was granted — an increase of 31 percent over what he got in 2009 — as well as options valued at $4.4 million, which marks a decrease of 26 percent year over year. Britt’s 2009 option award included a $2 million stock option for renewing his employment contract through 2012.
Britt also received other compensation valued at $296,880, up 12 percent from 2009. That included $192,734 for personal use of a company plane and $40,250 in reimbursements for financial services.
During its first full year apart from Time Warner Inc., from which it split in March 2009, Time Warner Cable shed 454,000 residential cable TV subscribers.
While the New York-based cable company’s subscriber numbers could show that the popularity of watching TV on websites like Hulu and Netflix is starting to cut into cable TV’s hold on consumers, when pressed in January to comment on so-called cord-cutting Britt questioned the sustainability of the Netflix model. He said Netflix and its peers are essentially acting as extra middle men between the companies that create entertainment and those that deliver it.
Netflix investors feel differently: The company’s stock tripled in 2010, and the company currently has a market value of $12.7 billion.