Snowflake Inc., the cloud-computing company reported that its third-quarter revenue is more than doubled from a year earlier. Its stock also rose 223 per cent since its Sept. 15 initial public offering. These numbers helped Chief Executive Officer Frank Slootman to become one of the best-paid technology executives. According to the reports, a compensation package he received upon joining Snowflake in April 2019 awards him a batch of options every month – for four years – that are now worth more than $108 million each, or about $1.3 billion annually.
He also gets a $375,000 annual base salary, which can go higher depending on the firm’s performance. Slootman’s pay includes more than 13.7 million options with a strike price of $8.88.
In October 2018, about six months before Slootman joined and negotiated his compensation, the company raised funds at a valuation of about $3.5 billion. It’s now worth almost $110 billion, according to a report published in Economic Times
Once the full options package is paid out in early 2023, it would be worth about $5.2 billion based on the latest share price. Snowflake shares jumped more than 14 per cent on Friday to $387.70.
Snowflake is the third CEO gig for the Dutch-born Slootman in less than 20 years.
He led data-storage firm Data Domain from 2003 until its takeover by EMC Corp. in 2009, then ran cloud-service firm ServiceNow Inc. from 2011 to 2017.