$24M separates the No. 1 and No. 2 spots in latest CEO pay ranking

Plastics News intern Kelly Arndt takes over Hollee Keller's spot for this week to talk CEO compensation.

This week marks the annual CEO issue where current and retired CEOs are profiled. As part of the project, I had the opportunity to research the highest-paid CEOs at publicly traded plastics processors and crunch their compensation numbers.

As Plastics News did last year, I inspected filings of the public firms found in our processor rankings, whose annual sales are primarily from plastics, to evaluate the pay summaries of their CEOs.

Let's begin with some broad number summaries for the 2020 fiscal year and see how they compare to 2019.

The sum of total corporate sales of all 23 public companies we included was $87 billion. However, only 19 of these firms were included in last year's batch. For these we can compare total sales. Despite the struggle of COVID-19, sales increased for this group by 8 percent over 2019.

This success is reflected in the 11 percent increase in total compensation of the 13 executives for which we have data for both years. Salary alone only accounted for 3 percent of that gain.

Here are the Top 10 CEOs with the largest percentage of total compensation to annual company sales.

• 4 percent, Jesse Singh, CEO and president of Azek Co. Inc.

• 1.6 percent, Paul Antoniadis, chairman and CEO of Good Natured Products Inc.

• 1 percent , Daniel Rykhus, CEO and president of Raven Industries Inc.

• 0.9 percent, R. Jeffrey Bailly, Chairman, CEO and president of UFP Technologies Inc.

• 0.8 percent, Fred Lampropoulos, chairman, CEO and president of Merit Medical Systems Inc.

• 0.8 percent, Vicki Holt, CEO and president of Proto Labs Inc.

• 0.4 percent, Mike McGaugh, CEO and president of Myers Industries Inc.

0.4 percent, Gregory A.C. Yull, CEO and president of Intertape Polymer Group Inc.

• 0.3 percent, Lance Mitchell, CEO and president of Reynolds Consumer Products Inc.

• 0.3 percent, Scott Barbour, director, CEO and president of Advanced Drainage Systems Inc.

• 0.3 percent, Miguel Fernandez, CEO of Tupperware Brands Corp.

These large percentages were alarming to me at first glance, especially in comparison to the grand total compensation as a percent of combined sales at 0.14 percent. This is until you consider that the typical CEO is paid more in bonuses or stock awards than they are in base salary. So, how about we breakdown the Top 10 CEOs with the highest total compensations and compare it to the top 10 CEOs with the largest base salaries for 2020.

• $35.5 million, Jesse Singh, CEO and president of Azek Co. Inc.

• $11.4 million, Lance Mitchell, CEO and president of Reynolds Consumer Products Inc.

• $10.1 million, Tom Salmon, chairman and CEO of Berry Global Group Inc.

• $8.7 million, John McGrath, CEO of Pactiv Evergreen Inc.

• $7.7 million, Fred Lampropoulos, chairman, CEO and President of Merit Medical Systems Inc.

• $7 million, Stephan Tanda, CEO and president of AptarGroup Inc.

• $7 million, Robert Patterson, chairman, CEO and president of Avient Corp. (formerly PolyOne Corp.)

• $6.1 million, Scott Barbour, director, CEO and president of Advanced Drainage Systems Inc.

• $5.9 million, Anthony J. Allott, chairman and CEO of Silgan Holdings Inc.

• $4.98 million, James Metcalf, chairman and CEO of Cornerstone Building Brands Inc.

• $1,736,538, Fred Lampropoulos, chairman, CEO and president of Merit Medical Systems Inc.

• $1,550,000, Lance Mitchell, CEO and president of Reynolds Consumer Products Inc.

• $870,000, Scott Barbour, Director, CEO and president of Advanced Drainage Systems Inc.

• $868,400, Gregory A.C. Yull, CEO and president of Intertape Polymer Group Inc.

• $780,000, Daniel Rykhus, CEO and president of Raven Industries Inc.

• $764,648,Jesse Singh, CEO and president of Azek Co. Inc.

• $677,492, Miguel Fernandez, CEO of Tupperware Brands Corp.

$600,000, R. Jeffrey Bailly, chairman, CEO and president of UFP Technologies Inc.

• $583,292, Vicki Holt, CEO and president of Proto Labs Inc.

• $468,750, Mike McGaugh, CEO and president of Myers Industries Inc.

• $143,040, Paul Antoniadis, chairman and CEO of Good Natured Products Inc.

Jumping into this project, I expected an identical order for these lists. This was until I found out about the variability and large impact that stock awards can have on total compensation.

For example, Azek's Singh may be earning the largest total compensation in comparison to total company earnings (4 percent) this is mostly due to high bonus and stock reward earnings. In fact, Singh has a modest, below average salary of $764,000.

Revisit last year's issue and you may notice some of the top CEOs have received a significantly reduced base salary in 2020. In response to the global pandemic, some top executives gave up a portion of their earnings to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on their businesses.

We would like to highlight the nine CEOs who did just that. It does not take away from the struggle some firms faced, but it does showcase solidarity, support, resilience and leadership in a time of crisis.

• Scott Barbour, Advanced Drainage Systems Inc. and 23 other executives took a 10 percent base pay reduction from April to October of 2020.

• John Chiminski, Catalent Pharma Solutions Inc. Over a three-month period, Chiminski and the executive leadership team took base salary reductions in order to fund "thank you" bonuses to their U.S. based production and support employees; each employee received approximately $700.

• Joren Knockaert, Deceuninck North America LLC. Company directors waived part of their salary. Knockaert specifically gave up over $84.500.

• Brian Kesseler, DRiV LLC. During the second quarter, Kesseler and direct staff took a 50 percent salary reduction. In the third quarter, executive directors took a 20 percent salary reduction while Kesseler gave up his entire base salary.

• Don Walker, Magna International Inc. and other executive officers reduced short-term incentives with Walker giving up approximately 46 percent.

• Charles S. McFarlane, Otter Tail Corp. Between May and July of 2020, McFarlane took a 25 percent base-pay reduction. Other executive officers took a 15 percent base-pay reduction.

• Vicki Holt, Proto Labs Inc. Between May and September of 2020 Holt and other executive officers voluntarily gave up a percentage of their base salaries. Holt gave 20 percent while all others gave 10 percent.

• Pierre-André de Chalendar, Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp. Executive officers reduced their 2020 compensation by 25 percent.

• Miguel Fernandez, Tupperware Brands Corp. In the second quarter of 2020, Fernandez and other top officials accepted a 20 percent reduction in salary.

Of the 23 public companies included, we were able to compare the difference in the salary and total compensation of 13 CEOs from 2019 to 2020. This allows us to analyze who had significant gains and dips in compensation whether it be due to COVID or other unmentioned factors.

Dirk De Cuyper of Resilux NV had the greatest positive change in salary with a 13 percent increase, while Fred Lampropoulos of Merit Medical Systems Inc. had the greatest decrease at 3.8 percent.

As for total compensation, Vicki Holt of Proto Labs Inc. had the largest increase with a whopping 318 percent gain despite giving up 20 percent of her base salary for 5 months due to COVID. Anthony J. Allott of Silgan Holdings Inc. had the largest dip in total compensation with a decrease of 55 percent.

Circling back, let's wrap up with recognizing who holds the top spots in our CEO pay ranking this year. Jesse Singh of Azek Co. Inc. has the No. 1 spot for highest paid CEO. Fred Lampropoulos of Merit Medical Systems Inc. takes the title as earning the highest base salary.

A list of the 23 CEOs from this year's ranking can be found in our data store. This MS Excel file includes CEO name, title, company name, website, stock market, ticker, fiscal year end, salary, total compensation, and total sales.

You can find the individual listings for our rankings at www.plasticsnews.com/rankings. This ranking, along with all others, are purchasable in MS Excel format from our data store, www.plasticsnews.com/data-lists.

Kelly Arndt is a research intern at Plastics News.