Yahoo Finance Live’s Brian Sozzi provides his take on the very volatile year for AMC Entertainment, as well as CEO Adam Aron’s request for a salary freeze in 2023 as the stock plunges.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: AMC CEO Adam Aron asked the company to freeze his compensation for next year because of the sharp drop in shares. We should mention, by the way, Aron earned $18 million in 2021. The stock plummeted over 70% this year. And Sozz has got a take on this.

BRIAN SOZZI: It's good to see a little belt tightening in the C-suite, Julie. And I'll quickly run through some of these numbers. Of course, Adam Aron. Shares of AMC down about 85% year to date. It has been a very volatile year for them, in large part because of an underwhelming period or time for the movie theater industry. Adam putting out a couple of tweets yesterday on this, a three-tweet thread calling out high inflation. Companies haven't been doing well. Perhaps he should get his pay freeze put forward.

He also asked 15 to other 20-- 15 to 20 other top executives AMC to also forgo their cash salaries for 2023. He ultimately says no increase for those at the top is the right thing to do. I have fans and bashers on Twitter, those who agree or disagree with my decisions. But know this-- my motives are pure. I try as best as I know how to lead AMC through the painful aftermath of this horror pandemic. And Julie, you mentioned Adam has pulled in some pay. I don't think he's going to be hurting.

JULIE HYMAN: So is he not-- is he forgoing his cash salary in 2023?

BRIAN SOZZI: My interpretation would-- no raise, no raise. So his base salary the past couple of years, in 2019, his base salary was 1.25 million, according to AMC's proxy. In 2020, it was 1.1 million. In 2021, 1.45 million. Now over the past three years, Adam has pulled in about 29, almost $47 million in total compensation.

A large part of that compensation has been through stock awards, according to the company's proxy. So, again, I hear where Adam's coming from. I get it, but he's not going to be going hungry any time soon because of this base pay freeze. Neither will a lot of the other executives at AMC, pulling in upwards of about $2 million to almost $5 million in total compensation the past few years.

And as I mentioned, of course, the stock down 85% year to date. And my take is it will be very interesting to see when these proxies hit in early next year as we start to get more of those executive compensation disclosures. What did CEOs do for this year, and what will they be ultimately signaling for next year? A lot of these stocks have been absolutely hammered. Results have come down. Are they going to do things like Adam has put forth, at least for his company?

BRAD SMITH: Well, stock price performance is typically baked into a contract from many executives anyway, and then there are tranches of some of the total compensation package within the equity payouts that they receive that are also baked into that agreement. So I wonder how much they'll still be making regardless of where kind of their net salary or their base salary, at least, comes out to.

BRIAN SOZZI: You're still looking, I think, Brad, even despite the stock declines, of course, all components of this, some executives have their compensation tied. Sales growth, operating profit growth, whatever it is, you're still looking for big payouts. Even though these stocks have been down, I would say the top 40 or 50 CEOs in this country are still probably pulling in over well over $10 million next year in total compensation, if not, in some cases, over 20 million.

BRAD SMITH: All right, we're going to continue to watch the compensation very closely.