June 2023
Happy June everyone! We hope you all had a lovely Memorial Day weekend and are enjoying the official start of summer.
The Fennel team decided to kick off this month by going to the ~coolest~ neighborhood in NYC… Times Square.
(This is a parody. For the record, nobody on the Fennel team thinks Times Square is the coolest neighborhood…)
So why were we in NYC’s biggest tourist trap? It wasn’t to visit Andrew Yang’s favorite subway stop. A few weeks ago, NASDAQ invited us to announce Fennel’s launch across US app stores, and to display the app on their tower in Times Square!
It was surreal to see our app advertised on a 120-foot tall screen, and worth weaving through all the Times Square tourists. While we were there, we had the pleasure of watching Fennel founder Daniel Naim chat with Jill Malandrino on NASDAQ’s TradeTalks. The two chatted about the rise of ESG, shareholder voting, and digging into all that juicy ESG data.
You can check it out here:
On a completely different note, we’d also like to take this opportunity to announce that Fennel is now offering a 7-day free trial to anyone who downloads the app!
Interested in seeing what Fennel’s all about but not sure if you’re ready to commit? This free trial gives you an opportunity to use the app and play around with its features before you open a brokerage account and link your banking info (because you can never be too careful with this sensitive information). That means you can get free access to all the data that Fennel provides, and see things like a company’s carbon footprint, CEO to median employee pay ratio, quick bios of all the people on a company’s board of directors, and upcoming shareholder votes.
So tell a friend to try Fennel! Or if you’ve downloaded the app but have yet to create an account, here’s your opportunity to try it out yourself.
What We’re Talking About
Netflix Shareholders Nix Executive Compensation Plan By Nearly 3-To-1 Margin In Non-Binding Vote (Deadline)
What happened: : Netflix asked its shareholders to approve its 2023 executive compensation plan during its AGM on June 1, and shareholders said, “nah.”
The executive compensation plan only got ~29% support, which translates to almost a 3-to-1 rejection. This vote also came during the ongoing writers strike, and the Writers Guild of America specifically asked shareholders to vote “no” on the ballot item. WGA West President Meredith Stiehm wrote in a letter that it was inappropriate for Netflix to pay its executives over $166 million, yet refuse to make the $68 million worth of changes to support its writers.
Why we care: These “say on pay” proposals hardly ever fail. Only 1.5% of the say on pay votes for Russell 3000 companies have failed this year. But not only did Netflix’s compensation plan fail in 2023, it also failed in 2022, with only 27% support.
In response to last year’s rejected compensation plan, Netflix says it “engage(d) with shareholders to solicit feedback” and added things like a salary cap, minimum stock option allocation, and performance-based cash bonus program for its executive chairman and two co-CEOs (i.e. these changes would apply to just those three people).
But if you look at the breakdown between salary, stock options, and bonus, co-CEO Ted Sarandos would’ve received pretty much the same total comp as 2022, which was about $40 million. Reed Hastings, who stepped down as CEO in January, would only receive $3 million total comp in his new executive chairman role. But Greg Peters, who took over Hastings’ role as co-CEO, would receive $34.65 million total comp, about $10 million more than he did in his old role as COO/CPO in 2022.
So were these changes enough to sway shareholder votes in 2023? Seems like they weren’t.
Shareholder Votes
(June 20) Should GM create a plan to source more sustainable materials? — We’re seeing plenty of automakers invest in making more EVs in an attempt to curb their carbon footprint. But even though EVs don’t emit CO2 like gas-powered cars do, there’s still a carbon footprint involved in making these cars.
A shareholder proposal is asking GM to set procurement targets to lower the carbon footprint of its aluminum, steel, leather, and rubber supply chain. By disaggregating and disclosing data related to specific materials, shareholders argue that GM can take more intentional steps towards sustainability.
(June 27) Should Mastercard use merchant codes to identify gun sellers? — In September 2022, the global standards committee International Organization for Standardization (ISO) approved a special merchant category code (MCC) to designate firearm sellers. MCCs are an industry standard used to identify types of businesses, and a special MCC for gun sellers was meant to help detect and report suspicious activity, without impeding legal gun sales.
Since this designation was an industry standard, Mastercard went along with it. But perhaps unsurprisingly, certain pro-gun politicians began creating laws prohibiting or restricting the use of this special code. This put Mastercard in a bit of a pickle, so it decided to stop using the designation in order to avoid a legal fight with these pro-gun groups.
Now shareholders — specifically City Comptroller Brad Lander on the behalf of the New York City Retirement Systems — want to know what gives with this flip-flopping. They’re asking Mastercard to go on the record and report the justification for its position on MCCs for gun stores.
A Noteworthy Number
$382 billion
The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently dropped its World Energy Investment 2023 report, which had a bunch of interesting stats, including that an estimated $2.8 trillion will be invested in energy this year. Of that $2.8 trillion, $1.7 trillion will be invested in clean energy, while $1.1 trillion will be invested in fossil fuels. This means for every $1 spent on fossil fuels, roughly $1.55 will go to clean energy. The report notes that five years ago that ratio was 1:1.
But an especially interesting statistic (thus the noteworthy number) is that an estimated $382 billion will be invested in solar energy, which is important because investment into oil production was estimated at $371 billion. Meaning that investments into solar are expected to eclipse (get it?) investments into oil production.
This is a big change from ten years ago, when investment into oil production sat at $636 billion and solar investments were a measly (in comparison) $127 billion.
Don’t believe me?
The IEA put together a bunch of charts to visualize its data. You can see that and other key findings here.
Your Bestie,
Fennel
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