Snowflake unveils $448 million pay plan for CEO tied to ambitious stock targets
July 16 (Reuters) - Snowflake on Thursday unveiled a compensation package worth up to roughly $448 million for CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy, hinging on the cloud-based data analytics platform's market value almost doubling to $184 billion in seven years.
Ramaswamy's award, totaling 1 million shares, is structured into five tranches, each with escalating stock price milestones, and is designed to retain him as CEO until September 15, 2030.
Snowflake has been benefiting from clients shifting their workloads to its cloud platform as they invest to develop AI tools.
The company's stock price would need to climb to $531 by July 15, 2033 from Wednesday's closing price of $271.87 for the final tranche, adding up to $100 billion to its market capitalization.
Snowflake offers a platform where clients store and integrate their data in one place to generate business insights, build AI tools and solve operational problems.
Ramaswamy must remain CEO through September 15, 2029 for the first two tranches and September 15, 2030 for the last three to meet the service-based requirement, the company said.
The compensation package also includes clawback clauses for misconduct or accounting restatements, according to a regulatory filing.
Snowflake shares have risen about 24% this year.
In May, the company raised its annual product revenue forecast and announced a five-year deal worth $6 billion with Amazon Web Services to use AWS's Graviton processors and AI infrastructure.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)