Is Live Ventures Incorporated’s (NASDAQ:LIVE) CEO Pay Justified?
Jon Isaac became the CEO of Live Ventures Incorporated (NASDAQ:LIVE) in 2012. This analysis aims first to contrast CEO compensation with other companies that have similar market capitalization. Next, we’ll consider growth that the business demonstrates. Third, we’ll reflect on the total return to shareholders over three years, as a second measure of business performance. The aim of all this is to consider the appropriateness of CEO pay levels.
View our latest analysis for Live Ventures
How Does Jon Isaac’s Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?
Our data indicates that Live Ventures Incorporated is worth US$17m, and total annual CEO compensation is US$254k. (This number is for the twelve months until 2017). While we always look at total compensation first, we note that the salary component is less, at US$200k. We examined a group of similar sized companies, with market capitalizations of below US$200m. The median CEO compensation in that group is US$307k.
So Jon Isaac receives a similar amount to the median CEO pay, amongst the companies we looked at. This doesn’t tell us a whole lot on its own, but looking at the performance of the actual business will give us useful context.
You can see a visual representation of the CEO compensation at Live Ventures, below.
Is Live Ventures Incorporated Growing?
On average over the last three years, Live Ventures Incorporated has grown earnings per share (EPS) by 68% each year. In the last year, its revenue is up 43%.
This demonstrates that the company has been improving recently. A good result. The combination of strong revenue growth with medium-term earnings per share improvement certainly points to the kind of growth I like to see.
We don’t have analyst forecasts, but you could get a better understanding of its growth by checking out this more detailed historical graph of earnings, revenue and cash flow.
Has Live Ventures Incorporated Been A Good Investment?
With a three year total loss of 18%, Live Ventures Incorporated would certainly have some dissatisfied shareholders. So shareholders would probably think the company shouldn’t be too generous with CEO compensation.
In Summary…
Jon Isaac is paid around the same as most CEOs of similar size companies.
We think that the EPS growth is very pleasing, but we cannot say the same about the lacklustre shareholder returns (over the last three years). We’d be surprised if shareholders want to see a pay rise for the CEO, but we’d stop short of calling their pay too generous. CEO compensation is one thing, but it is also interesting to check if the CEO is buying or selling Live Ventures (free visualization of insider trades).
Or you might prefer this data-rich interactive visualization of historic revenue and earnings.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
