Should You Worry About Wilhelmina International, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:WHLM) CEO Salary Level?
Bill Wackermann has been the CEO of Wilhelmina International, Inc. (NASDAQ:WHLM) since 2016. First, this article will compare CEO compensation with compensation at similar sized companies. Next, we’ll consider growth that the business demonstrates. And finally – as a second measure of performance – we will look at the returns shareholders have received over the last few years. This process should give us an idea about how appropriately the CEO is paid.
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How Does Bill Wackermann’s Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?
Our data indicates that Wilhelmina International, Inc. is worth US$31m, and total annual CEO compensation is US$1.3m. (This is based on the year to 2017). While we always look at total compensation first, we note that the salary component is less, at US$500k. We examined a group of similar sized companies, with market capitalizations of below US$200m. The median CEO compensation in that group is US$303k.
Thus we can conclude that Bill Wackermann receives more in total compensation than the median of a group of companies in the same market, and of similar size to Wilhelmina International, Inc.. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean the pay is too high. We can get a better idea of how generous the pay is by looking at the performance of the underlying business.
The graphic below shows how CEO compensation at Wilhelmina International has changed from year to year.
Is Wilhelmina International, Inc. Growing?
On average over the last three years, Wilhelmina International, Inc. has shrunk earnings per share by 43% each year. It achieved revenue growth of 3.7% over the last year.
Sadly for shareholders, earnings per share are actually down, over three years. And the modest revenue growth over 12 months isn’t much comfort against the reduced earnings per share. So given this relatively weak performance, shareholders would probably not want to see high compensation for the CEO.
Although we don’t have analyst forecasts, shareholders might want to examine this detailed historical graph of earnings, revenue and cash flow.
Has Wilhelmina International, Inc. Been A Good Investment?
Since shareholders would have lost about 11% over three years, some Wilhelmina International, Inc. shareholders would surely be feeling negative emotions. It therefore might be upsetting for shareholders if the CEO were paid generously.
In Summary…
We compared total CEO remuneration at Wilhelmina International, Inc. with the amount paid at companies with a similar market capitalization. We found that it pays well over the median amount paid in the benchmark group.
Neither earnings per share nor revenue have been growing sufficiently fast to impress us, over the last three years.
Arguably worse, investors are without a positive return for the last three years. This analysis suggests to us that the CEO is paid too generously! Shareholders may want to check for free if Wilhelmina International insiders are buying or selling shares.
Of course, the past can be informative so you might be interested in considering this analytical visualization showing the company history of earnings and revenue.
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.
