Still can't get over the fact how the CEO got his pay rise. I mean 600k base is quite big relative to the market cap. Got to have a thick skin to see through that as a holder.

Maybe I'm being too negative again?

I dunno @edgescape , I agree $600k as a base is fairly generous at this end of the market but the STI is only $50k and there's no LTI. You could argue the incentives aren't very aligned with shareholders but, given the context he owns almost 15% of the company, I think he has better alignment than most CEOs. At least shareholders have a fair bit of certainty about what remuneration will be, rather than be at the whim of whatever grab-bag of KPIs the Board cooks up in any given year.

I thought the justification was reasonable (or at least existed!):

Maybe I'm just trying to justify my most recent purchase and am feeling a bit defensive...

[Holding a starter position here and IRL]

The thing I have against this is that the driving force behind AIM from this point is EEG. Abrahams only contribution to EEG, as far as I can tell, was somehow managing to buy it in 2021 at what looks to have been a very good price. Maybe I'm undercooking his abilities, but it would be nice to see a CEO who has more of a technology background if the board is going to run studies on whether they are attracting and retaining the right talent.

There's a few videos on YouTube of Bill McLaughlin discussing AIM/EEG product. Well worth checking out. The EEG guys are definitely the brains of the business. Who knew you could be so passionate about closed captioning!

Eg below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzgVmzanLf0&t=472s&ab_channel=AI-Media

Held IRL and SM.

@Noddy74 @UlladullaDave

Thanks for that. Was going to flip my point and say as investors you need some big picture imagination on what the CEO will do into the future and then come back to the present to say that the pay increase makes sense.

Then the question becomes what else can we expect in Ai media besides EEG?

I don't expect much from him. I don't really think there are any other arrows in the AIM quiver besides EEG and EEG seems to be run by some pretty competent people. Him being CEO doesn't matter all that much, at least not to my investment thesis. The thesis doesn't get blown up because the CEO is costing a couple of hundred thousand dollars more than he probably should.

@UlladullaDave If you speak to Tony, he and the AIM exec team and board identified EEG as a necessary acquisition back in 2019 and the path to the IPO was one of many paths explored to find the funding for it.

How much of that is history being re-written by the victors and how much should be attributed to the on-going running of the EGG business I'm not sure sure, but thought I'd just raise the counter point.

Overall I agree Tony is overpaid for the size of the business and listed performance so far, but accept @Noddy74's point from a total rem package point of view it is reasonable.

@Wini

If you speak to Tony, he and the AIM exec team and board identified EEG as a necessary acquisition back in 2019 and the path to the IPO was one of many paths explored to find the funding for it.

Interesting. Hate to drop another dumb question but is there any reference to that like a report or public interview? Otherwise I will try and search for it

Still doing DD on this.