Discovery Chief Got Options on Nearly $500 Million in Stock on Eve of AT&T Deal
May 19 2021 - 5:36PM
Dow Jones News
By Theo Francis
Discovery Inc. gave Chief Executive David Zaslav 14.8 million
stock options on Sunday, the day before the company and AT&T
Inc. announced a plan to merge Discovery with AT&T's
WarnerMedia unit, according to a securities filing.
The shares underlying the options were valued at $489 million on
Wednesday afternoon, as Discovery's Class A stock traded around $33
a share. Discovery shares have fallen about 16% since the start of
trading on Monday, shortly after the deal was unveiled. The options
are currently trading out of the money, meaning the share price
would need to rise over the next eight years for Mr. Zaslav to
profit from exercising them.
On Tuesday, Discovery said it had entered into a new, seven-year
employment agreement on unspecified terms with Mr. Zaslav, who is
expected to head up the combined company.
A Discovery spokesman confirmed that the options stemmed from
the new contract, which was approved by the board on Sunday along
with the broader AT&T transaction. He declined to comment on
the pay agreement's terms.
The options are scheduled to vest -- or become fully Mr.
Zaslav's -- over roughly seven years, starting in a year, with
about half of them vesting in May 2026 and in 2027, the securities
filing shows. They expire in 2028.
The cost for Mr. Zaslav to convert the options into Discovery
stock ranges from $35.65 to $43.33 a share, meaning all of the
options currently would cost more to cash in than they would yield
in shares. The value of the company's shares would have to rise by
about 7% from Wednesday's close for some of the options to be worth
exercising, and by about 24% for all them to be in the money.
Mr. Zaslav has run Discovery since 2007 and previously ran a
business unit for NBC Universal Inc. He has ranked among the
current S&P 500's 10 highest-paid CEOs in 10 of the past 11
years, according to data from MyLogIQ, which provides data from
securities disclosures.
The executive's compensation for 2020 totaled $37.7 million,
Discovery reported in a securities filing last month, down 17% from
the prior year and his smallest annual pay package since 2016. His
compensation since 2010 has totaled more than $659 million, MyLogIQ
data show. Those figures include some equity awards that have yet
to vest.
Mr. Zaslav is already a significant holder of Discovery shares,
with about 4.13 million Class A and Class C shares, valued at
roughly $134 million at Wednesday afternoon prices, according to
data from InsiderScore.
Those figures exclude Sunday's options grant, as well as equity
awarded to him under his 2018 employment agreement. Equity from
that deal that has yet to vest includes nearly 10 million options,
about 900,000 appreciation rights linked to the company's stock
price, and more than 630,000 restricted shares.
Write to Theo Francis at theo.francis@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 19, 2021 17:21 ET (21:21 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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