A regulatory document issued on Monday disclosed that Intel shareholders voted against the compensation of the company's senior executives last week.
The decision is advisory and will not directly impact the salary of Intel's executives, but it sends a signal that investors are closely monitoring CEO Pat Gelsinger's performance and the progress of his rescue plan for the chip giant.
In total, owners representing approximately 34% of the outstanding shares supported the proposal. Shareholders representing around 920 million shares voted in favor, while those representing 1.77 billion shares voted against.
The vote is the most recent instance of shareholders voting against executive remuneration packages, which can include company stock worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
In April, AT&T shareholders voted against a remuneration bill for executives. According to the activist investor group As You Sow, 16 companies in 2021 had their executive compensation rejected by shareholders.
According to a regulatory document, Gelsinger became CEO of Intel in February 2021 and earned a remuneration package of $178.59 million later that year.
The pay includes a salary in excess of $1 million, a bonus of $1.75 million, more than $140 million in stock awards, and approximately $30 million in option awards.
Since taking over, Gelsinger has been on a quest to bring Intel around, as the once-dominant chipmaker has fallen behind in manufacturing and begun to lose market share to competitor AMD.
Gelsinger has stated that Intel will invest extensively in the construction of new chip facilities, and that the company will also produce chips for other chip makers.
The exact distributions to Gelsinger rely on the performance of Intel's stock over a five-year period.
Intel stated in its proxy filing that the Compensation Committee believed that making 73 percent of the CEO's new-hire equity rewards contingent on achieving aggressive stock price increase was in the best interest of Intel and its stakeholders.
The compensation legislation from the previous year similarly failed, garnering only 38 percent support.
Intel stated in its proxy following last year's vote, "The Committee took the outcome of this vote seriously and was extremely focused on obtaining and reacting to our investors' feedback regarding Intel's executive compensation programs."
Based on Intel's filing, its other listed officers for 2021 included the general manager of the company's data center division, Sandra Rivera, as well as three former executives who left during 2021 and one executive who plans to leave this month.
