Netflix Missteps to Cost CEO $1.5 Million in Stock Options

Posted 12/23/2011 at 11:45am | by Paul Lilly

11

Comments

Print

Reed Hastings and everyone else behind the trenches at Netflix would probably like a do-over for all of 2011. They're not getting one, and for Hastings, the company's CEO, he's not getting the full amount of his stock option award next year, either. Instead, he'll receive exactly half of what he would have been entitled to had things not gone so wrong for Netflix in recent months, but don't feel too bad for Hastings.

His 50 percent reduction in stock option awards still amount to a cool $1.5 million, according to regulatory documents Netflix filed this week, AP reports. That's on top of the half a million dollars he'll receive in base salary, giving him a grand total of $2 million to pay the bills with.

Netflix is coming off of a rough year in which its share price has plummeted 75 percent since the middle of July. The streaming movie and DVD-by-mail company has also lost at least 800,000 subscribers due to controversial business decisions, like raising subscription prices and announcing a completely separate DVD rental business, a decision that was later renounced.