While Humira’s 2023 loss of exclusivity hung over AbbVie’s head for years, the ascent of the Chicago drugmaker’s immunology successors Skyrizi and Rinvoq under prior CEO Richard Gonzalez has swiftly erased most major concerns about the company’s future.
Now, after his first year as the pharma’s new CEO, former AbbVie operating chief Robert Michael is captaining a company with few obstacles on the horizon—and picking up a sizable payday for his efforts so far.
For his work in 2024, Michael—who took over the CEO post from Gonzalez on July 1—collected roughly $18.5 million in total pay. The figure was a $4 million jump over the sum he earned in 2023, when he was the Chicago drugmaker's chief operating officer.
Of the amount earned in 2024, $1.6 million came from Michael’s salary, which increased a little less than $200,000 compared with 2023 as part of his promotion, AbbVie said in its 2025 proxy statement. The majority of the CEO’s pay package came from nearly $10 million in stock and option awards plus a $4.6 million cash bonus tied to company incentives.
Michael additionally received more than $480,000 in AbbVie’s “all other compensation” category, which includes the cost of a corporate car, financial planning services, nonbusiness air travel and security, AbbVie’s compensation committee explained in its report.
Michael was credited roughly $190,000 in the same category back in 2023.
In rationalizing Michael’s 2024 pay package, AbbVie’s compensation committee noted that the CEO “achieved or exceeded” multiple goals in 2024, including laying the groundwork for sustainable, long-term business performance, building investor confidence and credibility, advancing AbbVie’s mid- and late-stage pipelines and progressing the company’s “transformation to a biopharmaceutical culture.”
The company highlighted several wins from 2024, such as AbbVie’s return to top-line sales growth in the first full year following Humira’s 2023 loss of exclusivity in the U.S., as well as key approvals for drugs like Skyrizi in ulcerative colitis, Vyalev in Parkinson’s disease and Epkinly in relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma.
The company also advanced several late-stage candidates and continued to build out its pipeline in 2024 through a slew of collaborations, licensing agreements and asset acquisitions, AbbVie’s compensation committee pointed out.
AbbVie’s former CEO Richard Gonzalez—who collected a $25.7 million payout for his final full year on the job in 2023—often ranked among the industry’s highest-paid CEOs during his tenure. Gonzalez built an impressive reputation over his 10-plus years at the top of the company, during which AbbVie rose to impressive heights on Humira’s success and ultimately stuck the landing once the inflammatory disease megablockbuster toppled over the patent cliff.
As of late, AbbVie has pinned its growth hopes on its Humira follow-on treatments Skyrizi and Rinvoq, which grew sales to $11.7 billion and $6 billion last year, respectively. Given the strong performance, AbbVie earlier this year lifted its combined 2027 sales projection for the meds to $31 billion.
“When you think about Skyrizi and Rinvoq, our strategy here was to elevate the standard of care for patients and ultimately drive a rapid return of growth for the company beyond Humira, and that’s exactly what we’ve been able to execute,” Michael said during AbbVie’s fourth-quarter earnings call in January.
With Humira’s loss of exclusivity fading into the rear view and Skyrizi and Rinvoq now carrying their weight and then some, the CEO expects smooth sailing ahead for AbbVie.
“Given that we have no significant [loss of exclusivity] events for the rest of this decade, we have a clear runway to growth for at least the next eight years,” Michael said on the call.