Comcast CEO Brian Roberts’ 2021 Pay Package At $34M; NBCU Chief Jeff Shell Earns $21M

Total compensation last year for Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts was $33.9 million, up 3.8% from $32.7 million the year before.

It included a salary of $3.2 million, stock awards of $13.5 million, option awards of $8.5 million, non-equity incentive plan compensation (cash bonus) of $8.6 million and other items worth close to $2 million.

Jeff Shell, the CEO of NBCUniversal, made $21.5 million last year, up from $16.5 million in 2020, according to the entertainment giant’s proxy filed with the SEC today that lists the salaries of companies’ top five highest paid executives. Shell does not make the list every year.

His pay jumped on a boost in non-equity incentive plan compensation to $9.9 million from $5.8 million and a higher stock awards from the year before.

Chief financial officer Mike Cavanagh earned $27.4 million.

Dave Watson, the CEO of Comcast Cable, earned $22.7 million.

Compensation is a mix of quantitative factors — like hitting certain financial metrics — and qualitative factors. In the proxy’s discussion of pay, the board’s compensation committee said Roberts “led the company’s strategic focus on connectivity, aggregation and streaming, which we believe will better position our company for the long term. Mr. Roberts set the tone for our businesses to execute at the highest level, to work together across our complementary, high-performing businesses at Comcast Cable, NBCUniversal and Sky and to continue to accelerate convergence in media and technology and leverage our global technology platform. At the same time, he continued to guide our company’s overall response to the pandemic and reinforce our stakeholder and sustainability initiatives, all with a focus on doing the right thing for all of our stakeholders and society at large.”

As for Shell, the proxy said he “continued to successfully lead and mitigate negative pandemic impacts on NBCUniversal in 2021. Under Mr. Shell’s leadership, our theme parks performed exceptionally well, and we opened Universal Beijing Resort in September 2021. He also continued to lead our strategy for Peacock, which experienced significant growth in monthly active accounts and revenue. NBCUniversal has also innovated to create new pay windows for early viewing opportunities to better monetize our content and intellectual property, including on Peacock. NBCUniversal’s financial performance rebounded well in 2021, with its revenue increasing by 26.1% to $34.3 billion and its Adjusted EBITDA increasing by 6.0% to $5.7 billion, including Peacock losses.”

Dana Strong, in her first year as CEO of Sky, earned just shy of $16 million.