Mark Pincus, the chief executive officer for Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA), recently requested that his annual salary would be cut to just $1.00 while the company figures out a new compensation plan to keep top employees while cutting overall costs. What’s more is that Pincus won’t garner any bonuses or equity awards in 2o13.
Although Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) has yet to reveal last year’s salaries, 2011’s revelations show Pincus earned a salary of $300,000 and a total compensation of $1.68 million.
Ever since Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) took their shares public two years ago, the popular social game creator has been struggling to prove their worth. The company closed their first day on the public market at $10 shares. Currently, there are only worth a third of their original market value.
It doesn’t help that Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) has close ties with Facebook. Although the company has launched their own gaming website that’s not tied with Facebook, there are fewer users that are willing to play games and pay for virtual goods. Not only that, but Zynga has seen many of their executives leave over the past year.
One of the more recent losses was when Debra Chraptay, former chief information officer, left for a chief executive officer position for a cloud company.
Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA)’s SEC filing read, “The company’s 2013 executive compensation program is designed to focus on two primary objectives: first, retaining and motivating our talented, entrepreneurial executive leadership team; and second, aligning our executive pay structure with company performance-based incentives. We believe that by focusing on both retention and performance, the compensation packages align with our strategy to build value for our stockholders.”
Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA)’s most valued executives (not including CEO Pincus) will now earn annual salaries of either $425,000 to $500,000. The exact amount will vary by position. Those numbers are based on the specific position.
Hopefully, Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA) can figure out their money situation before they get into deeper in financial trouble.
