A.H. Belo will hold its annual shareholders meeting today at 1:30. Watch at home, if you like. In advance of the meeting, yesterday Robert Decherd, the chairman, president, and CEO, issued a good-news-bad-news memo. The good: the company will give bonuses ranging from 1.5 to 3 percent of employees’ base salaries. The bad: the wage cuts made last year are now permanent. Jump for the full text of the memo:
The Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors recently approved a one-time cash bonus opportunity in recognition of the progress that the Company has made over the past 12 months. Bonuses for most employees will range from 1.5 percent to 3.0 percent of base salary, with target amounts based on an employee’s current compensation level and job responsibilities. Payment will be contingent on each individual operating company, or A.H. Belo consolidated for corporate employees, meeting a target for profit from operations for the first nine months of 2010. Payment of any earned bonuses will be made in December of this year.
Participants in the Company’s executive compensation plans and non-bargaining unit participants in the Company’s sales compensation plans will not be eligible for the aforementioned one-time bonus. However, executive compensation plan participants will be eligible to receive a reduced bonus, as calculated in the existing plan designs, using the same metrics described above. Sales compensation plan participants will continue to be eligible to receive a full bonus as specified in their respective plans.
The Compensation Committee has concluded that the salary reductions made in 2009 are permanent, and that no merit increases or restoration of the matching contribution in the Company’s 401(k) plan (the A.H. Belo Savings Plan) will be made until such time as revenues stabilize. We have made tremendous progress in reducing expenses and streamlining operations during a time of unprecedented change in our industry. However, we must remain diligent in managing costs until revenues stabilize.
Along the way, all of us can be very proud of the continued positive impacts A.H. Belo’s journalists have made on the communities we serve. This is evidenced in many tangible ways, as well as through journalistic recognition of every newspaper A.H. Belo publishes. Most recently, the editorial staff of the Dallas Morning News received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing, and we all join in congratulating them!
Sincerely,
Robert Decherd
