New Delhi: Google’s India-born CEO Sundar Pichai will cash in stock award of over Rs 2,524 crore ($380 million) this week, media reports have said. Pichai had received 353,939 restricted shares before a promotion in 2014, and the pay day will be handed over to him this week.
This is touted to be one of the largest single payouts to a public company executive in recent years.
Pichai’s pay day comes amidst positive news in the company as Google parent Alphabet reported a surge in quarterly profits. Profit in the first three months of 2018 soared more than 70 percent from a year ago to $9.4 billion, Alphabet said in an earnings report that was well above forecasts.
Alphabet’s stocks have surged 90 percent since the grant date of the shares to Pichai, thus pushing the values of the shares far more. Google has not disclosed Pichai’s compensation for 2017 as yet.
Revenue at the California-based internet giant during the first three months of this year was $31.1 billion, up 26 percent from the same period last year.
Alphabet shares slipped slightly in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings report, evidently on investor concerns about growing costs.
Bright spots at Alphabet included YouTube, where executives are focusing on original video content and live streaming to mobile devices in the competitive market.
Alphabet is the first major Silicon Valley firm to report first-quarter earnings, and the report comes amid heightened concerns over how private user data is protected in light of the hijacking of data on millions of Facebook users.
With their platforms allowing targeted ads, Google and Facebook dominate the online advertising ecosystem although there have been signs the “duopoly” is weakening slightly.
($1 = 66.40 Indian rupees as per interbank foreign exchange market opening today)
