Philip Auld became the CEO of Trent Limited (NSE:TRENT) in 2014. This report will, first, examine the CEO compensation levels in comparison to CEO compensation at companies of similar size. Next, we’ll consider growth that the business demonstrates. Third, we’ll reflect on the total return to shareholders over three years, as a second measure of business performance. This method should give us information to assess how appropriately the company pays the CEO.

Check out our latest analysis for Trent

How Does Philip Auld’s Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?

At the time of writing our data says that Trent Limited has a market cap of ₹108b, and is paying total annual CEO compensation of ₹62m. That’s a modest increase of 0.4% on the prior year year. When we examined a selection of companies with market caps ranging from ₹71b to ₹228b, we found the median CEO compensation was ₹38m.

It would therefore appear that Trent Limited pays Philip Auld more than the median CEO remuneration at companies of a similar size, in the same market. However, this fact alone doesn’t mean the remuneration is too high. We can get a better idea of how generous the pay is by looking at the performance of the underlying business.

You can see, below, how CEO compensation at Trent has changed over time.

Is Trent Limited Growing?

On average over the last three years, Trent Limited has shrunk earnings per share by 15% each year. It achieved revenue growth of 19% over the last year.

Sadly for shareholders, earnings per share are actually down, over three years. And while it’s good to see some good revenue growth recently, the growth isn’t really fast enough for me to put aside my concerns around earnings. It’s hard to argue the company is firing on all cylinders, so shareholders might be averse to high CEO remuneration.

It could be important to check this free visual depiction of what analysts expect for the future.

Has Trent Limited Been A Good Investment?

Most shareholders would probably be pleased with Trent Limited for providing a total return of 114% over three years. So they may not be at all concerned if the CEO is paid more than is normal for companies around the same size.

In Summary…

We compared the total CEO remuneration paid by Trent Limited, and compared it to remuneration at a group of similar sized companies. We found that it pays well over the median amount paid in the benchmark group.

Neither earnings per share nor revenue have been growing sufficiently fast to impress us, over the last three years.