Should You Worry About EPC Groupe's (EPA:EXPL) CEO Salary Level?

In This Article:

The CEO of EPC Groupe (EPA:EXPL) is Olivier Obst. This analysis aims first to contrast CEO compensation with other companies that have similar market capitalization. Next, we'll consider growth that the business demonstrates. And finally we will reflect on how common stockholders have fared in the last few years, as a secondary measure of performance. This method should give us information to assess how appropriately the company pays the CEO.

View our latest analysis for EPC Groupe

How Does Olivier Obst's Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?

Our data indicates that EPC Groupe is worth €146m, and total annual CEO compensation was reported as €726k for the year to December 2018. While this analysis focuses on total compensation, it's worth noting the salary is lower, valued at €493k. When we examined a selection of companies with market caps ranging from €90m to €360m, we found the median CEO total compensation was €368k.

Thus we can conclude that Olivier Obst receives more in total compensation than the median of a group of companies in the same market, and of similar size to EPC Groupe. However, this doesn't necessarily mean the pay is too high. We can better assess whether the pay is overly generous by looking into the underlying business performance.

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

ENXTPA:EXPL CEO Compensation, December 14th 2019
ENXTPA:EXPL CEO Compensation, December 14th 2019

Is EPC Groupe Growing?

EPC Groupe has reduced its earnings per share by an average of 16% a year, over the last three years (measured with a line of best fit). It achieved revenue growth of 7.7% over the last year.

Sadly for shareholders, earnings per share are actually down, over three years. And the modest revenue growth over 12 months isn't much comfort against the reduced earnings per share. These factors suggest that the business performance wouldn't really justify a high pay packet for the CEO. We don't have analyst forecasts, but shareholders might want to examine this detailed historical graph of earnings, revenue and cash flow.

Has EPC Groupe Been A Good Investment?

EPC Groupe has served shareholders reasonably well, with a total return of 26% over three years. But they probably wouldn't be so happy as to think the CEO should be paid more than is normal, for companies around this size.

In Summary...

We compared the total CEO remuneration paid by EPC Groupe, and compared it to remuneration at a group of similar sized companies. Our data suggests that it pays above the median CEO pay within that group.

We think many shareholders would be underwhelmed with the business growth over the last three years. And shareholder returns are decent but not great. So we doubt many shareholders would consider the CEO pay to be particularly modest! Shareholders may want to check for free if EPC Groupe insiders are buying or selling shares.