After a strong year for Gilead Sciences’ core roster of HIV and cancer meds, the California-based drugmaker handed a healthy pay bump to its chief executive.
For all of 2022, Gilead CEO Daniel O’Day collected (PDF) $21.62 million, an 11% increase over the $19.23 million he scored in 2021.
Salary accounted for about $1.7 million of O’Day’s payout. The CEO saw the biggest pay increases to his stock awards and incentive-based compensation, which clocked in at around $10.6 million and $4.7 million, respectively.
O’Day took home another $3.75 million in options—about $400,000 more than he made in that category for 2021—while another $860,000 fell into the “other compensation” field.
Breaking down his other compensation, O'Day collected about $15,000 from 401(k) matching. O'Day also rang up nearly $95,000 on "personal use" of Gilead's corporate aircraft. The other compensation category also accounts for costs incurred from O'Day's use of corporate cars.
Another $750,000 came from a payment plan Gilead offered (PDF) to O'Day to offset "forfeited or foregone pension benefits" when he left Roche.
As for the rationale behind the 2022 pay increase, the company said in its proxy filing that O’Day helped Gilead meet several goals across sales, innovation, R&D and employee engagement and diversity.
Specifically, the company introduced five new product candidates to its pipeline, scored an early second-line lymphoma nod for its CAR-T drug Yescarta and completed or started a number of drug trials.
On the commercial front, Gilead clinched U.S. market share of 46.3% for its star HIV med Biktarvy. The company hit 26% U.S. patient share for Trodelvy in second-line breast cancer, and it saw strong performance for COVID-19 treatment Veklury, the company said.
On metrics of engagement, inclusion and diversity, an employee survey showed an “increase in overall employee approval in Gilead,” the company said in its report.
The company also achieved representation goals pertaining to women and Latinx visibility but fell short on metrics for representation of Black employees in the U.S. Gilead is also working to increase its reliance on Black-owned suppliers and boost clinical trial diversity, with that goal extending to physicians as well.
Even as Gilead’s COVID-fueled growth winds down, the company gave a solid financial showing in 2022, charting an 8% sales increase over 2021—excluding the performance of Veklury.
Within the company’s bread-and-butter HIV franchise, Biktarvy broke through the $10 billion sales barrier for the first time, helping Gilead’s entire HIV department generate sales of $17.2 billion.
Gilead’s oncology sales, underpinned by Trodelvy, grew 71% to $2.1 billion last year, while cell therapy sales—mainly driven by Yescarta—jumped 68% to $1.5 billion.
So far, O’Day has landed near the high end of pharma CEO compensation in 2022. AbbVie chief Richard Gonzalez, for instance, collected $26.3 million, compared with Novartis chief Vas Narasimhan’s $8.98 million compensation on the low end.
Taking a look at other drugmaker payouts, J&J handed new CEO Joaquin Duato around $13.1 million, while Moderna’s Stéphane Bancel made $19.4 million and Eli Lilly’s David Ricks pocketed $21.4 million.