Each year, Tim Cook receives a lot of Apple stock as compensation as part of his compensation package, which aligns his interests with those of shareholders and reflects the company’s performance. With his shares, Tim Cook can choose to keep them or sell them to quickly recover several million dollars! Cook has just liquidated more than 200,000 shares this week, which will allow him to recover $50 million.
One of Tim Cook’s biggest stock sales
Tim Cook recently sold an impressive total of 223,986 shares Apple, which will earn it $50,276,076 in a few days. This major transaction adds to his already very comfortable salary as head of one of the most profitable companies in the world.
These shares that Tim Cook sold were part of a bonus based on Apple’s performance compared to other companies in the S&P 500. Apple’s strategy, which outperformed its competitors, allowed Cook to receive this bonus consequently. Indeed, the more Apple performs against its competitors, the more Tim Cook is rewarded by Apple’s board of directors, which is logical.
That’s not all for Cook this week, he also received an additional batch of 219,502 shares in his portfolio. However, not all shares are accessible immediately, 54,876 of these shares will only be released in three equal tranches in April 2027, 2028 and 2029. In addition, 164,626 of these shares are subject to performance criteria , with a potential release on October 1, 2027, depending on the company’s results between 2025 and 2027.
At the start of 2024, Tim Cook already owned more than three million Apple shares, in addition to a significant stock of 1.3 million RSUs (restricted stock units) still unvested. The shares he has not yet sold are estimated at more than $500 million, a colossal amount that could further increase with the success of the Cupertino company in the years to come.
Even though Tim Cook’s base salary has been set at $3 million in 2023, his main income comes from selling Apple shares. Every year, in October, Cook sells hundreds of thousands of shares to increase its annual income, as it did again this year. This recurring strategy, in addition to the exceptional value of Apple shares, makes Cook one of the highest paid CEOs in the world.
