They say you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Joni Mitchell never lies , though Kanye West disagrees .
On this (and pretty much only this), Alphaville is with Kanye: we knew we had it with Domino’s Pizza’s commendably transparent and undeniably silly disclosures of its bosses’ pizza consumption habits.
This time last year, we used the Domino’s food item expenses listed in the company’s DEF14A proxy filings to calculate roughly how much pizza its leadership was snaffling: the results were both mind-boggling and deserving of a great many caveats .
At the time, we were waiting for Domino’s proxy for 2022, which would show how newly-elevated chief executive Russell Weiner’s consumption habits compared with those of his predecessor, Ritch Allison.
The results were stunning. Weiner packed in a record-breaking amount of Domino’s “food items” as perks during his first full year on the job — $7,322 of them to be precise ( SEC link here ):
Naturally, we awaited this year’s proxy with bated breath.
So it pains us to report, treasured reader, that we have been (almost) robbed ( SEC link ):
If you can’t read that, here’s the herbaceous sauce: where Domino’s used to break out the food items component of its executives’ compensation, now shareholders are given a lump sum that includes those purchases alongside “personal usage of corporate aircraft, relocation expenses [and] employee recognition gifts”.
Did our previous reporting cause some consternation at Domino’s? We may never know, but we can still put a possible figure on Weiner’s eating habits. The proxy goes on to say:
None of the amounts in this column individually exceeded the greater of $25,000 or 10% of the total amount of these perquisites and other personal benefits shown in this column for each named executive officer, except with respect to the cost of personal use of corporate aircraft by Mr. Weiner ($258,039).
First up: $258k on private jets hoo boy — was he delivering all the pizzas himself?
Secondly: this is the vast majority of the money, so we can still do some maths. Alphaville’s quantitative analysis suggests $262,069 minus $258,039 is $4,030 — ergo, that’s the maximum amount of pizza/pizza-adjacent perks Weiner could have received.
However you slice it, it’s a big drop versus 2022 (though if it is the max, more than Weiner managed during his pre-CEO days — inflation is probably a factor there):
What to say? It’s a blow for pizza, it’s a blow for Domino’s shareholders, and it’s a blow for corporate transparency. It’s possibly not a blow for Weiner’s arteries.