The bank accounts of the top brass at Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. are showing a little more luster these days.
Executives at the Waltham, Mass.-based laboratory equipment maker took advantage of recent restricted stock awards to make some fast cash this week. Together, the group took home slightly more than $470,000 in proceeds from the Aug. 17 stock sales, including a $220,000 payday for CEO Marijn Dekkers.
COO Marc Casper made over $100,000 after selling 2,255 Thermo Fisher shares, while Alan Malus, president of the company’s customer channel group, generated nearly $58,000 from the sale of 1,287 shares. General Counsel Seth Hoogasian and CFO Peter Wilver each pocketed about $45,000 after selling around 1,000 shares apiece.
All of the stock sold for $44.76 a share.
The company uses a formula closely tied to its financial performance — specifically, adjusted earnings per share — to determine individual awards. For example, in 2008 EPS reached $3.16, or 19 percent higher than 2007, and all of the executives except Dekker received at least 24 percent more restricted shares than they did the prior year.
Overall, the top five executives at the company shared about 60,000 restricted shares during each of the past two years. The outlay was even bigger in 2006, although that total was inflated by a retention bonus Dekker received following the merger of Thermo Electron and Fisher Scientific.
The 2010 awards, however, are likely to be much leaner. Adjusted EPS at Thermo Fisher so far this year trails 2008 levels by 16 cents a share and most analysts following the company anticipate second-half earnings will do well to stay even with last year’s pace.