CEO Paywatch: Hormel leader's compensation drops as share price slides

Jim Snee, the chairman, president and CEO of Austin, Minn.-based Hormel Foods Corp., saw his realized compensation decline 44.5% from the prior year, mainly because of a smaller cash bonus that is a combination of award plans.

Jim Snee

Chairman, president and CEO

Hormel Foods Corp.

Note: Hormel's annual nonequity incentive plan is based on three components: a long-term incentive plan (LTIP) based over a three-year period; an annual incentive plan; and an annual operators' share plan that has been in place at Hormel since 1932.

Snee's annual cash bonus from those three performance-based components was $1.3 million, down 72% from the $4.7 million awarded the previous year.

Hormel's lagging total shareholder return over the last three years meant the company failed to meet the threshold for LTIP awards for the 2020 to 2023 time period, and no awards were granted for that pay category.

Hormel's total shareholder return was less than that of the S&P 500 packaged food and meats index over the last 1- 2- and 3-year periods. However, it has outperformed those peer companies over the past 10 years.

The company is changing its LTIP plan for next year, making it a combination of relative total shareholder return (50%) plus return on invested capital goals and sales-growth targets (25% each).

Hormel failed to meet its profit goals for the year and as a result the annual performance-based cash bonuses to executives went down.

In the company's fiscal year ended Oct. 27, Hormel's profits declined 20% to $793 million and Snee said on the fourth-quarter earnings call he expects profits to decline in the first half of their fiscal 2024.

Annual profit measures are the biggest component of the annual incentive award but the formula also includes revenue, return on assets and ESG measures. Combined, the company achieved 62% of the targets for the year.