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D-FW’s highest-paid CEOs: Nexstar’s Perry Sook leads the pack as national median dips

Sook’s pay package topped $39 million, while familiar names like AT&T’s John Stankey and D.R. Horton’s David Auld took cuts to their compensation.

It’s a turbulent world for media and entertainment right now, but don’t tell Perry Sook that.

The CEO of Irving-based Nexstar Media Group shepherded the company to record revenue in 2022, earning him the distinction of being Dallas-Fort Worth’s highest-paid CEO for the year. His compensation totaled $39.3 million, an 86% increase over 2021 when he placed ninth in The Dallas Morning News’ annual analysis of executive pay.

Nexstar, the nation’s largest owner of television stations, saw its revenue soar past the $5 billion mark for the first time in company history, driven by gains in distribution fees and political advertising. It also was given a majority interest in The CW last year, one of only a handful of national broadcast networks that can reach nearly all U.S. households.

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“Nexstar is a unicorn in the media business,” said the 65-year-old Sook, whose broadcast career spans four decades. “We are way bigger than any other company in the pureplay local broadcast space.”

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Performance-based stock awards made up the majority of Sook’s compensation package – $33 million of the total. Nexstar’s stock price rose 17.7% in 2022, and it returned over $1 billion to its shareholders through dividends and share buybacks.

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Sook and other communication services CEOs were the highest-paid CEOs across the country, according to Equilar’s annual CEO pay trends report. They’ve received the highest median compensation for the fourth consecutive year. Equilar attributes this to a large amount of money in advertising.

Amit Batish, director of content at Equilar, noted that communication services CEOs saw their median pay drop from 2021 to 2022, despite staying the highest-paid group. Dallas’ other major players in the communications space, telecommunications firm AT&T and dating app giant Match Group, each decreased pay to their CEOs.

Some of Dallas-Fort Worth's highest-paid executives include (top row from left)...
Some of Dallas-Fort Worth's highest-paid executives include (top row from left) Kimberly-Clark's Michael Hsu and AT&T's John Stankey; (middle row from left) EnLink Midstream's Jesse Arenivas, Nexstar Media Group's Perry Sook, Match Group's Bernard Kim and Charles Schwab's Walter Bettinger II; and (bottom row from left) Tenet Healthcare's Saumya Sutaria and Celanese's Lori Ryerkerk.(Dallas Morning News file photos)
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The 10 highest-paid CEOs

This year’s top-10 list saw some new faces, while some familiar ones fell a couple of notches.

The biggest winner was Jeffrey Liaw, co-CEO of online vehicle auction company Copart. His compensation more than quadrupled after he was appointed co-CEO in April, having previously been Copart’s top executive for North America. A large equity award pushed his total 2022 compensation to just shy of $31 million, good for fourth on this year’s list.

Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods appears in the Dallas-Fort Worth ranking for the last time with...
Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods appears in the Dallas-Fort Worth ranking for the last time with the company's headquarters move to the Houston area now official.(AP)

Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods jumped up the list to No. 2 from No. 5 last year. His pay totaled $35.9 million versus $23.5 million in 2021. Similarly, Jon Winkelreid, CEO of Fort Worth private equity firm TPG and the third-highest paid CEO, saw his compensation jump nearly 70% to $34.1 million.

D.R. Horton’s David Auld, last year’s highest-paid CEO, fell to No. 5 after a pay cut of about 2%. His pay was just under $30 million.

Though it’s still the nation’s largest home builder by a large margin, D.R. Horton saw decreasing demand in 2022 because of economic crosswinds. High inflation brought on rising mortgage rates that effectively priced many potential homebuyers out of the market.

AT&T CEO John Stankey, typically one of the region’s highest-paid executives, could do no better than ninth in 2022, with his compensation declining around 8% to $22.9 million. The telecommunications titan spun off its entertainment branch WarnerMedia in early 2022 to focus on its core business, resulting in a foreseen loss in revenue.

Bernard Kim is another new face, though he represents a familiar company. The former Zynga president took over as CEO of Match Group in May 2022, replacing Sharmistha Dubey. Dubey was last year’s second-highest paid CEO, while Kim came in at No. 8 with $23.9 million.

Breakdown of pay

The median pay of D-FW CEOs increased by 15.8%, bucking a national trend. While the number of CEOs to surpass the $15 million mark stayed the same, there were 50% more CEOs in the $10 million to $15 million range.

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CEOs across the country saw their pay drop 1.3%, according to Equilar. The corporate consulting firm analyzes the pay of CEOs at the 500 largest U.S. companies. The drop was largely due to a significant 5.7% decrease in the value of cash bonuses awarded.

“The reason for that is really economic uncertainty,” Batish said. “Stock prices fluctuated last year. Total returns fell at the median. So companies were a lot less willing to provide premium cash bonuses to their CEOs.”

Compensation stayed relatively stable despite this because of a 7.6% increase in the value of stock awards. Nexstar’s Sook and Exxon Mobil’s Woods were among the biggest beneficiaries of those awards.

Stock awards are typically granted at the beginning of the year. Last year’s economic outlook started out strong before inflation took hold, so economic uncertainty reflected in cash bonuses did not affect stock awards.

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8 women in the rankings

Diversity in the leadership of public companies is one of corporate America’s ongoing challenges and barometers.

There were eight women CEOs in this year’s rankings — one more than last year. Six of last year’s seven made the list again and were joined by two new women executives. However, a changing of the guard means it’s likely only six companies will still be run by women at the end of 2023.

Commercial Metals CEO Barbara Smith announced her retirement this year.
Commercial Metals CEO Barbara Smith announced her retirement this year.(Commercial Metals Co.)
AMN Healthcare Susan Salka (shown) retired in 2022, turning over the reins to Carey Grace.
AMN Healthcare Susan Salka (shown) retired in 2022, turning over the reins to Carey Grace.(AMN Healthcare / AMN Healthcare)

Dubey, last year’s leading female earner, was replaced by a man, as was Finance of America’s Patricia Cook. Barbara Smith, CEO of Commercial Metals, will retire later this year and be replaced by Peter Matt. Cook, who retired at the end of June 2022, still made the list because she led her company for the majority of the year.

New women at the helm of companies are continuing to appear in the rankings. Denise Paulonis replaced Christian Brickman at Sally Beauty at the end of 2021. Enhabit Home Health and Hospice was spun off from Encompass Health and became its own publicly traded company last summer. As such, Enhabit entered D-FW’s top public companies ranking for the first time, bringing CEO Barb Jacobsmeyer with it.

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AMN Healthcare’s Susan Salka also retired in November 2022, but was replaced by another woman, Cary Grace.

The percentage of women in this year’s D-FW CEO rankings was consistent with the proportion represented in Equilar’s broader study. For the first time since 2018, Equilar found that the median pay package for women was greater than that of men.

In D-FW, women also out-earned men. As a group, their median compensation decreased from 2021 due to an anomaly in Cook’s 2022 compensation and the departure of Dubey, but their median still outperformed men’s by 6.6%.

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Diversity still work in progress

Fifteen non-white CEOs were represented in the rankings, with YUM China’s Joey Wat standing alone as the only woman of color on the list. Two companies were led by Hispanic men in 2022 — EnLink and Arcosa — and Fernando Araujo took over as CEO of Dallas-based Berry Corp. earlier this year. No company had a Black CEO.

Men of Asian or Southeast Asian descent led 12 companies, with two additional joining the list next year — Bob Pragada at Jacobs and Timothy Go at HF Sinclair. They replaced white men.

Jacobs CEO Bob Pragada (right) replaced outgoing chief executive Steve Demetriou (left).
Jacobs CEO Bob Pragada (right) replaced outgoing chief executive Steve Demetriou (left).(Jacobs)
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White men made up more than three-quarters of the CEOs ranked in 2022. In 2021, 86% of Fortune 500 CEOs were white men, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

What’s next?

Batish said it’s hard to tell where executive pay packages will come in this year. Inflation is cooling and the S&P 500 is on the rise, but sluggish conditions at the beginning of the year could affect pay since stock awards are tied to factors such as share price.

“We may expect stock awards to decline just because 2022 closed off on a rough note,” Batish said.

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Other factors could come into play too. AT&T’s stock price recently hit a three-decade low after allegations of lead contamination. Energy price fluctuations could boost or blow up oil and gas company results. Rising interest rates could cause consumers to pull back on spending, with retailers taking a resulting hit.

All in all, there are too many variables in flux for reliable crystal ball predictions.

“It’s a little too early to tell,” Batish said. “We have to see how things play out at the end of the year.”