Apple CEO Tim Cook's total compensation rose 18% to $74.6 million last year

In brief: Tim Cook's base salary of $3 million didn't increase last year, but don't feel too bad for the softly spoken Apple boss: his total compensation actually increased by 18% to $74.6 million. While Cook oversees the world's largest company by market cap, he's far from the world's highest-paid CEO.

In a proxy statement released on Friday, Apple said Cook's $3 million base salary remained unchanged for the third consecutive year in 2024. However, he earned $58.1 million in stock awards, $12 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation, and $1.5 million in other compensation, bringing the total to $74.6 million.

Apple wrote that the value of Cook's equity award was increased from $40 million to $50 million because his 2023 pay would have been near the lower end compared with benchmark data for peer CEOs' pay.

Cook received $63.2 million in overall pay in fiscal 2023 and $99.4 million in fiscal 2022. He took a 40% pay cut last year partly as a result of his own recommendation for his compensation to be reduced.

Apple is the most valuable company in the world with a market cap of $3.58 trillion, but Cook needs to more than double his compensation to become the highest-paid CEO. Jon Winkelried, CEO of alternative asset manager TPG, was paid $198.7 million, while Hock E. Tan, president and CEO of Broadcom, received a reported compensation of $161 million.

Apple's annual revenue in fiscal year 2024 was up 2% to $391 billion, though its net income of $93.7 billion was down 3%. Services revenue was a particularly bright spot, reaching an all-time high of $96.1 billion, up from $85.2 billion in fiscal 2023, while iPhone sales were up 2% to $201.18 billion.

Apple's SEC filing also revealed that former CFO Luca Maestri received an overall pay package of $27.1 million for fiscal 2024, the same amount as General Counsel Kate Adams and Deirdre O'Brien, Apple's Senior Vice President of Retail & People. COO Jeff Williams, meanwhile, saw his 2024 pay package rise slightly to $27.1 million in total, up from $26.9 million a year earlier.

Cook became a billionaire in 2020 and is now estimated to be worth around $2.3 billion. Most of this value comes from his holdings in Apple, where he owns over 3 million shares, constituting less than a 1% stake in the company. Apple's market cap was $348 billion when he took over in 2011.