J.C. Penney Company, Inc. (JCP): The One Way Ron Johnson Has Helped

What has been overlooked by most media outlets is that — on a net basis — Ron Johnson hasn’t really been paid at all by J.C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE:JCP)! When Johnson decided to take the CEO job at the retailer, he invested $50 million of his own money in the company. That’s more than the present value of the compensation he has received from J.C. Penney since he started working there a year and a half ago.

How is that possible?
When Johnson started work at J.C. Penney, he received approximately 1.66 million restricted stock units. RSUs are essentially shares of stock that cannot be sold until after a certain date; in Johnson’s case, Jan. 27, 2012. Based on J.C. Penney’s closing stock price of $31.71 on the effective date of the RSU grant (Nov. 1, 2011), the award was worth $52.7 million. However, J.C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE:JCP) stock has dropped by more than 50% since then; based on last Friday’s $15.45 closing price, the value of 1.66 million shares is approximately $25.7 million.

Johnson has also received cash compensation and benefits from J.C. Penney. In his first three months on the job, this totaled approximately $625,000. In fiscal year 2012 (the period ending in February 2013), Johnson earned $1.9 million in total compensation. Thus, as of Feb. 2, Johnson had earned slightly more than $2.5 million in cash and benefits in his tenure at J.C. Penney, along with 1.66 million shares of J.C. Penney stock (worth $25.7 million today).

On the other hand, Ron Johnson paid J.C. Penney $50 million cash when he accepted the job, in return for warrants that allow him to purchase more than 7 million shares of J.C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE:JCP) stock for $29.92. $50 million was the fair value of the warrants at the time they were issued, but after J.C. Penney’s recent poor performance, they have lost most of their value. Unless J.C. Penney’s stock price rises above $29.92 before the warrants expire in 2018, Johnson will get nothing for the $50 million he invested in J.C. Penney.