7 ms·

If Intel cuts its dividend the stock will crater. Since executive compensation is stock-based, tied to the stock performance, or both, there's an obvious incent

by manv1 4y ago

If Intel cuts its dividend the stock will crater. Since executive compensation is stock-based, tied to the stock performance, or both, there's an obvious incentive to keep the dividend going. The dividend has become more political than normal. In finance theory, a dividend is supposed to be a paid-out return. If you're cutting salaries to pay the dividend that means that you don't have enough surplus...by definition. Intel's sales aren't going to get any better anytime soon, so the cut is coming eventually. They're starting a death spiral, one that'll be hard to escape.

osigurdson 4y ago
>> If Intel cuts its dividend the stock will crater Not necessarily. It really makes zero difference to the valuation of a company. Investors really punish companies that can barely cover their dividend (or worse have to borrow). If earnings are bad and revenues are not growing, the dividend is just a hokey shell game that works for about 5 minutes.
- epistasis 4y ago
  Depends on the investor. There is an entire class of investor that is focused on stocks that reliably deliver a dividend. I wasn't aware that Intel had joined old-economy companies like oil, but I also don't fully understand the dividend investor mindset, as I can't figure out a tax situation that makes it appealing...
  - sumantsharma 4y ago
    Probably works out fine for investors who have retired from their professional career.
  - fooker 4y ago
    > also don't fully understand the dividend investor mindset Suppose you have ~5 million invested for retirement. The dividend you could get from this is ~100k-150k per year. That is a very livable salary if you want to retire early (45? 50?) and focus on your family and hobbies. Does this make sense yet? It's essentially a conservative way to lead your live if you are not necessarily married to your profession.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      No, it absolutely makes no sense to me. Dividends are taxed as income, capital gains is taxed at different rates.
      - fooker 4y ago
        >Dividends are taxed as income. Exactly, you either supplement your income with it or retire early and replace your income with it. There are whole generations of people doing this.
      - jmillikin 4y ago
        In the USA, dividends may be taxed at the capital gains rate depending on the company (Intel qualifies) and how long the position has been open. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/qualifieddividend.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/qualifieddividend.asp
        epistasis 4y ago
        Aha, thank you, this is exactly the reason.
    - stevenhuang 4y ago
      Dividends are forced liquidation events. If you want dividends simply sell a portion of your holdings every quarter. When one focuses solely on dividend yield and not total return, which includes capital appreciation, it's a sign they don't really what's going on. Where do you think the dividends are coming from? Straight from the company's market cap. By preferring companies that consistently pay high dividend yields you're selecting for larger and established companies that have no better way to reinvest the money. This may result in a fine choice if you want income, but the important distinction is not because of their dividend yield... it's because of their positions as market leaders. Thus you may do just as well by selecting those large market leaders that pay no dividends but are reinvesting heavily.
      - fooker 4y ago
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    Yes, of course. Many investors want low risk, inflation proof investments with good dividend yields. However, Intel seems like a poor choice for such investors regardless if they temporarily prop up the dividend via cuts that will inevitably cause harm in the future. After all, what are the chances that Intel will become a higher performing organization as a result of this? REITs and telcos are a much better choice for this investor class.
  - mrweasel 4y ago
    > I also don't fully understand the dividend investor mindset That interesting, because I don't understand the mindset of investors who are just trading stocks like baseball cards. They don't seem to care what the company actually produce, just that the numbers tell them that the stock can sell for a little more next year. Divided makes a lot of sense, because it keeps yielding money, for the same initial investment. So it's just extra money, but it's money you can actually spend. Sure you pay taxes on the divided, but you still hold the stock and can sell that at a late time. Honestly I feel that it problems are the companies that never pay divided. The investors then depend on buy-backs or trading to recover their investment. This has created investors that do not care about the companies they invest in. The companies can go broke tomorrow and that's fine, as long as they can sell their stocks before it happens.
    - osigurdson 4y ago
      It is really just a matter of what a company does with its earnings. The options are: 1) invest in the business (including acquisitions, etc), 2) stockpile cash and 3) pay dividends.
      - anticensor 4y ago
        A company cannot do 2) for too long at once or it might face legal trouble.
    - drblastoff 4y ago
      Studies have shown (take this with a grain of salt because I heard this from a podcast), that dividend stocks and non-dividend stocks have roughly equal returns in the end, with dividend stocks faring slightly worse. This is because dividend stocks tend to appreciate less. So taking $X in dividends every six months ends up being the same as selling $X of your portfolio every six months in the end.
      - KMag 4y ago
        Except that there are often different tax rates between capital gains and dividends. Even if there weren't tax rate differences, reinvesting dividends effectively compounds the tax rate annually, whereas the capital gains tax is a simple rate the year you realize the gain. Though, in a tax-free retirement account, it's moot.
  - code_biologist 4y ago
    Taxes aren't ideal, but a brief philosophical defense of the dividend investor mindset: Before the 1920s stock bubble, buying stock in a company was buying a portion of the company's future free cash flow in return for investment. The value of a stock was fundamentally coupled to running a profitable business. The dividend was the point. The 1920s saw a major shift of valuation philosophy to a speculative mode, focusing on the price of a stock. Now, occasional crazy things happen where the price of a stock can shift dramatically even without change in the dynamics of the underlying business. Prices should reflect future earnings... but they often don't. Portfolio construction and indexing are protections against this, but the underlying philosophy goes even further in treating stock prices as random walks with underlying market beta, not as real businesses. Indexing punts out of real valuation. I won't defend "dividend investing" with weird dividend manipulation, but I really do like having an alternative valuation model: the value of an investment is not the result of an increase in price since my purchase of that asset, but instead my recurring cash flow yield from owning that asset. I certainly have money in index funds and speculative assets, but I get a lot from a yield based valuation philosophy instead of price based valuation: - Prices are heavily manipulated and favor insiders and funds, not individual investors. - It feels more connected with reality. - The growth of passive investments probably poses systemic risks (Mike Green's talks and interviews are great) and I don't want to piss in the pool too much. Yield based valuation makes me more comfortable making active investments. - Easier to value different asset classes against each other, for example buying a house to rent out vs stocks. The valuation is my dollar yield per time per dollar invested. - Boomers retiring and pulling money out of the system plus decay of globalization will put heavy deflationary forces on markets in the coming years. I don't feel like a price based approach to valuation provides clear guidance on how to navigate investments other than "be smart". A yield based approach lets me walk away with a return even if stocks stay flat or go down. Pretty much all of the above comes from the book Getting Back to Business by Daniel Peris. Bit dry and dense, but very thought provoking.
- metaphor 4y ago
  > Not necessarily. Have you considered the structural implications of INTC float held by dividend ETFs alone[1], and how certain fund managers would be compelled to take action if all of a sudden Intel just stopped distributing a dividend? E.g. compare INTC holdings of Vanguard VYM[2] v. VanEck SMH[3] for about 5 minutes. > It really makes zero difference to the valuation of a company. Are you sure[4]? This is a bold, unsupported assertion without a single cite, as if to imply that valuation isn't a subjective craft practiced by people from diverse walks of life. [1] https://www.etf.com/stock/INTC https://www.etf.com/stock/INTC [2] https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profile/vym#portfolio-composition https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profi... [3] https://www.vaneck.com/us/en/investments/semiconductor-etf-smh/holdings/ https://www.vaneck.com/us/en/investments/semiconductor-etf-s... [4] https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/membership/professional-development/refresher-readings/discounted-dividend-valuation https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/membership/professional-deve...
marricks 4y ago
> executive compensation is stock-based If they're cutting executive salaries by the largest amount it sounds good on paper but doesn't really do anything because their pay is, as you said, stock based. So, unsurprisingly, very skeezy unless they change the largest factor in their pay.
- dmurray 4y ago
  Intel is down almost 50% YoY so the execs have already seen a much larger pay cut. Not that I have a whole lot of sympathy for someone who now makes only $100mm/year, but surely that's variable compensation working as it should.
moneywoes 4y ago
Why is that, aren’t buy backs better for investors anyway? One reason I imagine is them being excluded from dividend etfs which would mean an outflow
- wombatpm 4y ago
  I can spend a divided. Especially if I have to take a mandatory distribution. You have to sell (at the right time) to get profit from a buyback
  - jpgvm 4y ago
    You are forced to pay tax when you get a dividend. Buybacks allow you to sell over time and achieve the same thing but with preferential tax treatment in most jurisdictions. Or more importantly not sell at all and not be forced to pay tax when you are just going to re-invest the dividend.
ChuckMcM 4y ago
FWIW when I worked at Intel their 401k match was also in Intel Stock so there is that. (I do not know if they still do that) And yes, when I was there in '84 they were doing pay cuts to keep layoffs to a minimum.
- perth 4y ago
  401k match at Intel is just normal $ through Fidelity now
  - ChuckMcM 4y ago
    Bummer, the "Free$tock" program (as it was called when I was there) was a good deal.
coldtea 4y ago
>If Intel cuts its dividend the stock will crater. Wait till you see what will happen to the stock when talent leaves the company (whatever it has left, anyway) after such pay cuts...
- bickfordb 4y ago
  real talent leaves
  - ryanisnan 4y ago
    This. I've had one pay cut in my career, and it immediately made me just up and leave. I don't know why one would tolerate such a thing, unless there was significant up-side still on the table.
    - raws 4y ago
      Upside might be not having to search for a job in current job market with layoffs happening left and right.
      - miguelazo 4y ago
        There are still plenty of opportunities out there. Layoffs are a social contagion that do very little, if anything, for a company’s financial health. This is all about the trend and trying to “discipline” labor. But it won’t work, especially this time because the US doesn’t have decent childcare (many mother won’t return to the workforce for a year or more) and has blocked millions of immigrants who would normally have entered the country the past several years.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        That wouldn't be a problem for the more talented players - the ones you most want to keep
        drblastoff 4y ago
graton 4y ago
In 2021 Pat Gelsinger made $179 million dollars[1]. But his salary was $1.1 million. So him taking a 25% cut in his salary is pretty much nothing. [1] https://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/intel-ceo-pat-gelsinger-earned-179m-in-2021 https://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/intel-ceo-pa...
- BeetleB 4y ago
  This common assertion is false. See my earlier comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34584450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34584450
  - doetoe 4y ago
    Your comment only says that it was mostly in RSU, and since the stock had been going down it will likely be worth 1/3 by the time it vests. Even so, 25% of 1.1m is pretty much negligible, certainly compared with the 5% normal employees get cut
    - BeetleB 4y ago
      I agree a 25% cut for him is nothing. I was pointing out the falsehood of him making $179M. He made about $10M in 2021 and will likely not see most of the remaining amount as he will not hit the share price in time.
      - doetoe 4y ago
        I misunderstood the part of the RSU's: I thought you meant that by the time they vest they will be worth considerably less than $179M, because the stock price has gone down. However if I understood you correctly now, these will be worth 0 if the stock price doesn't hit a certain value in time
        BeetleB 4y ago
        Yes - he simply won't get those stocks. Read the 2022 Proxy statement starting from around P 66 for all the gory details. I think my estimate of $10M was probably high.
ramraj07 4y ago
What does surplus even mean with respect to wages? You could always pay your employees more! So what you mean is surplus is when you pay the market rate wages which in turn suggests the minimum amount of money the company should pay to ensure it gets the workers it needs. If they cut the salaries and still enough people stay, then the money they saved still is surplus by that definition.
- miguelazo 4y ago
  “Gets the workers it needs” Clearly it doesn’t, since Intel couldn’t even save itself during a chip shortage when prices were sky high. They’re getting smoked by AMD and TSMC, in terminal decline much like the mismanaged Motorola of old. It certainly doesn’t have the leadership it needed, so if anyone should have their pay cut, it’s the fat cats at the top who financialized the company a la GE and ran it into the ground.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    Sounds like the mistakes in those regard were bad strategic decisions not inability to attract talent.
    - miguelazo 4y ago
      They're related problems, but yes, I would lay most of the blame at the VP level and above.
paulpauper 4y ago
This is why dividends are so bad. They become an obligation and companies get locked into paying them.
penguinvondoom 4y ago
Dividents are political, as well as stuff like who owns the company and executive policy and rewards and so on. We just tend to not talk about it a lot, or even see it as a political problem, even though these things underlie a huge part of our society
JustSomeNobody 4y ago
> Since executive compensation is stock-based, tied to the stock performance, or both, there's an obvious incentive to keep the dividend going. The wealthy getting wealthier on the backs of the working class. In this case, literally TAKING from the working class to maintain the wealth machine.

by manv1 4y ago

osigurdson 4y ago

>> If Intel cuts its dividend the stock will crater Not necessarily. It really makes zero difference to the valuation of a company. Investors really punish companies that can barely cover their dividend (or worse have to borrow). If earnings are bad and revenues are not growing, the dividend is just a hokey shell game that works for about 5 minutes.

epistasis 4y ago
Depends on the investor. There is an entire class of investor that is focused on stocks that reliably deliver a dividend. I wasn't aware that Intel had joined old-economy companies like oil, but I also don't fully understand the dividend investor mindset, as I can't figure out a tax situation that makes it appealing...
- sumantsharma 4y ago
  Probably works out fine for investors who have retired from their professional career.
- fooker 4y ago
  > also don't fully understand the dividend investor mindset Suppose you have ~5 million invested for retirement. The dividend you could get from this is ~100k-150k per year. That is a very livable salary if you want to retire early (45? 50?) and focus on your family and hobbies. Does this make sense yet? It's essentially a conservative way to lead your live if you are not necessarily married to your profession.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    No, it absolutely makes no sense to me. Dividends are taxed as income, capital gains is taxed at different rates.
    - fooker 4y ago
      >Dividends are taxed as income. Exactly, you either supplement your income with it or retire early and replace your income with it. There are whole generations of people doing this.
    - jmillikin 4y ago
      In the USA, dividends may be taxed at the capital gains rate depending on the company (Intel qualifies) and how long the position has been open. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/qualifieddividend.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/qualifieddividend.asp
      - epistasis 4y ago
        Aha, thank you, this is exactly the reason.
  - stevenhuang 4y ago
    Dividends are forced liquidation events. If you want dividends simply sell a portion of your holdings every quarter. When one focuses solely on dividend yield and not total return, which includes capital appreciation, it's a sign they don't really what's going on. Where do you think the dividends are coming from? Straight from the company's market cap. By preferring companies that consistently pay high dividend yields you're selecting for larger and established companies that have no better way to reinvest the money. This may result in a fine choice if you want income, but the important distinction is not because of their dividend yield... it's because of their positions as market leaders. Thus you may do just as well by selecting those large market leaders that pay no dividends but are reinvesting heavily.
    - fooker 4y ago
- osigurdson 4y ago
  Yes, of course. Many investors want low risk, inflation proof investments with good dividend yields. However, Intel seems like a poor choice for such investors regardless if they temporarily prop up the dividend via cuts that will inevitably cause harm in the future. After all, what are the chances that Intel will become a higher performing organization as a result of this? REITs and telcos are a much better choice for this investor class.
- mrweasel 4y ago
  > I also don't fully understand the dividend investor mindset That interesting, because I don't understand the mindset of investors who are just trading stocks like baseball cards. They don't seem to care what the company actually produce, just that the numbers tell them that the stock can sell for a little more next year. Divided makes a lot of sense, because it keeps yielding money, for the same initial investment. So it's just extra money, but it's money you can actually spend. Sure you pay taxes on the divided, but you still hold the stock and can sell that at a late time. Honestly I feel that it problems are the companies that never pay divided. The investors then depend on buy-backs or trading to recover their investment. This has created investors that do not care about the companies they invest in. The companies can go broke tomorrow and that's fine, as long as they can sell their stocks before it happens.
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    It is really just a matter of what a company does with its earnings. The options are: 1) invest in the business (including acquisitions, etc), 2) stockpile cash and 3) pay dividends.
    - anticensor 4y ago
      A company cannot do 2) for too long at once or it might face legal trouble.
  - drblastoff 4y ago
    Studies have shown (take this with a grain of salt because I heard this from a podcast), that dividend stocks and non-dividend stocks have roughly equal returns in the end, with dividend stocks faring slightly worse. This is because dividend stocks tend to appreciate less. So taking $X in dividends every six months ends up being the same as selling $X of your portfolio every six months in the end.
    - KMag 4y ago
      Except that there are often different tax rates between capital gains and dividends. Even if there weren't tax rate differences, reinvesting dividends effectively compounds the tax rate annually, whereas the capital gains tax is a simple rate the year you realize the gain. Though, in a tax-free retirement account, it's moot.
- code_biologist 4y ago
  Taxes aren't ideal, but a brief philosophical defense of the dividend investor mindset: Before the 1920s stock bubble, buying stock in a company was buying a portion of the company's future free cash flow in return for investment. The value of a stock was fundamentally coupled to running a profitable business. The dividend was the point. The 1920s saw a major shift of valuation philosophy to a speculative mode, focusing on the price of a stock. Now, occasional crazy things happen where the price of a stock can shift dramatically even without change in the dynamics of the underlying business. Prices should reflect future earnings... but they often don't. Portfolio construction and indexing are protections against this, but the underlying philosophy goes even further in treating stock prices as random walks with underlying market beta, not as real businesses. Indexing punts out of real valuation. I won't defend "dividend investing" with weird dividend manipulation, but I really do like having an alternative valuation model: the value of an investment is not the result of an increase in price since my purchase of that asset, but instead my recurring cash flow yield from owning that asset. I certainly have money in index funds and speculative assets, but I get a lot from a yield based valuation philosophy instead of price based valuation: - Prices are heavily manipulated and favor insiders and funds, not individual investors. - It feels more connected with reality. - The growth of passive investments probably poses systemic risks (Mike Green's talks and interviews are great) and I don't want to piss in the pool too much. Yield based valuation makes me more comfortable making active investments. - Easier to value different asset classes against each other, for example buying a house to rent out vs stocks. The valuation is my dollar yield per time per dollar invested. - Boomers retiring and pulling money out of the system plus decay of globalization will put heavy deflationary forces on markets in the coming years. I don't feel like a price based approach to valuation provides clear guidance on how to navigate investments other than "be smart". A yield based approach lets me walk away with a return even if stocks stay flat or go down. Pretty much all of the above comes from the book Getting Back to Business by Daniel Peris. Bit dry and dense, but very thought provoking.
metaphor 4y ago
> Not necessarily. Have you considered the structural implications of INTC float held by dividend ETFs alone[1], and how certain fund managers would be compelled to take action if all of a sudden Intel just stopped distributing a dividend? E.g. compare INTC holdings of Vanguard VYM[2] v. VanEck SMH[3] for about 5 minutes. > It really makes zero difference to the valuation of a company. Are you sure[4]? This is a bold, unsupported assertion without a single cite, as if to imply that valuation isn't a subjective craft practiced by people from diverse walks of life. [1] https://www.etf.com/stock/INTC https://www.etf.com/stock/INTC [2] https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profile/vym#portfolio-composition https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profi... [3] https://www.vaneck.com/us/en/investments/semiconductor-etf-smh/holdings/ https://www.vaneck.com/us/en/investments/semiconductor-etf-s... [4] https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/membership/professional-development/refresher-readings/discounted-dividend-valuation https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/membership/professional-deve...

marricks 4y ago

> executive compensation is stock-based If they're cutting executive salaries by the largest amount it sounds good on paper but doesn't really do anything because their pay is, as you said, stock based. So, unsurprisingly, very skeezy unless they change the largest factor in their pay.

dmurray 4y ago
Intel is down almost 50% YoY so the execs have already seen a much larger pay cut. Not that I have a whole lot of sympathy for someone who now makes only $100mm/year, but surely that's variable compensation working as it should.

moneywoes 4y ago

Why is that, aren’t buy backs better for investors anyway? One reason I imagine is them being excluded from dividend etfs which would mean an outflow

wombatpm 4y ago
I can spend a divided. Especially if I have to take a mandatory distribution. You have to sell (at the right time) to get profit from a buyback
- jpgvm 4y ago
  You are forced to pay tax when you get a dividend. Buybacks allow you to sell over time and achieve the same thing but with preferential tax treatment in most jurisdictions. Or more importantly not sell at all and not be forced to pay tax when you are just going to re-invest the dividend.

ChuckMcM 4y ago

FWIW when I worked at Intel their 401k match was also in Intel Stock so there is that. (I do not know if they still do that) And yes, when I was there in '84 they were doing pay cuts to keep layoffs to a minimum.

perth 4y ago
401k match at Intel is just normal $ through Fidelity now
- ChuckMcM 4y ago
  Bummer, the "Free$tock" program (as it was called when I was there) was a good deal.

coldtea 4y ago

>If Intel cuts its dividend the stock will crater. Wait till you see what will happen to the stock when talent leaves the company (whatever it has left, anyway) after such pay cuts...

bickfordb 4y ago
real talent leaves
- ryanisnan 4y ago
  This. I've had one pay cut in my career, and it immediately made me just up and leave. I don't know why one would tolerate such a thing, unless there was significant up-side still on the table.
  - raws 4y ago
    Upside might be not having to search for a job in current job market with layoffs happening left and right.
    - miguelazo 4y ago
      There are still plenty of opportunities out there. Layoffs are a social contagion that do very little, if anything, for a company’s financial health. This is all about the trend and trying to “discipline” labor. But it won’t work, especially this time because the US doesn’t have decent childcare (many mother won’t return to the workforce for a year or more) and has blocked millions of immigrants who would normally have entered the country the past several years.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      That wouldn't be a problem for the more talented players - the ones you most want to keep
      - drblastoff 4y ago

graton 4y ago

In 2021 Pat Gelsinger made $179 million dollars[1]. But his salary was $1.1 million. So him taking a 25% cut in his salary is pretty much nothing. [1] https://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/intel-ceo-pat-gelsinger-earned-179m-in-2021 https://www.crn.com/news/components-peripherals/intel-ceo-pa...

BeetleB 4y ago
This common assertion is false. See my earlier comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34584450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34584450
- doetoe 4y ago
  Your comment only says that it was mostly in RSU, and since the stock had been going down it will likely be worth 1/3 by the time it vests. Even so, 25% of 1.1m is pretty much negligible, certainly compared with the 5% normal employees get cut
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    I agree a 25% cut for him is nothing. I was pointing out the falsehood of him making $179M. He made about $10M in 2021 and will likely not see most of the remaining amount as he will not hit the share price in time.
    - doetoe 4y ago
      I misunderstood the part of the RSU's: I thought you meant that by the time they vest they will be worth considerably less than $179M, because the stock price has gone down. However if I understood you correctly now, these will be worth 0 if the stock price doesn't hit a certain value in time
      - BeetleB 4y ago
        Yes - he simply won't get those stocks. Read the 2022 Proxy statement starting from around P 66 for all the gory details. I think my estimate of $10M was probably high.

ramraj07 4y ago

What does surplus even mean with respect to wages? You could always pay your employees more! So what you mean is surplus is when you pay the market rate wages which in turn suggests the minimum amount of money the company should pay to ensure it gets the workers it needs. If they cut the salaries and still enough people stay, then the money they saved still is surplus by that definition.

miguelazo 4y ago
“Gets the workers it needs” Clearly it doesn’t, since Intel couldn’t even save itself during a chip shortage when prices were sky high. They’re getting smoked by AMD and TSMC, in terminal decline much like the mismanaged Motorola of old. It certainly doesn’t have the leadership it needed, so if anyone should have their pay cut, it’s the fat cats at the top who financialized the company a la GE and ran it into the ground.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Sounds like the mistakes in those regard were bad strategic decisions not inability to attract talent.
  - miguelazo 4y ago
    They're related problems, but yes, I would lay most of the blame at the VP level and above.

paulpauper 4y ago

This is why dividends are so bad. They become an obligation and companies get locked into paying them.

penguinvondoom 4y ago

Dividents are political, as well as stuff like who owns the company and executive policy and rewards and so on. We just tend to not talk about it a lot, or even see it as a political problem, even though these things underlie a huge part of our society

JustSomeNobody 4y ago

> Since executive compensation is stock-based, tied to the stock performance, or both, there's an obvious incentive to keep the dividend going. The wealthy getting wealthier on the backs of the working class. In this case, literally TAKING from the working class to maintain the wealth machine.