{"id":218028,"date":"2010-01-15T08:37:07","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T13:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.footnoted.org\/?p=4475"},"modified":"2010-01-15T08:37:07","modified_gmt":"2010-01-15T13:37:07","slug":"a-gold-star-for-red-robin%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/218028","title":{"rendered":"A Gold Star for Red Robin\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>January is half over, the news from Haiti is heartbreaking, and right now it seems that the snow will never melt.\u00a0 In all, it\u2019s been a tough few weeks.\u00a0Fortunately, the\u00a08-K<\/a> that Red Robin<\/a> (RRGB) recently filed lets us focus for a moment on something positive and bestow footnoted\u2019s first Gold Star of 2010.<\/p>\n

Red Robins are bright, colorful restaurants that keep kids happy with balloons, coloring pages, and visits from the company’s mascot. \u00a0Adults get to enjoy the unlimited seasoned fries and the ubiquitous sports-channelling tv’s until the food (which is, happily, several notches above fast food fare) arrives.\u00a0Of course, just because a restaurant\u2019s popular with customers like me doesn\u2019t mean that its corporate filings are equally appealing to its investors.\u00a0 But in this case, they may be.<\/p>\n

Under the August 15, 2008 restated employment agreement<\/a> that governed Chairman\/CEO Dennis Mullen’s employment until this past Monday, he was \u201celigible to receive a cash bonus for each of the years ended December 31, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 of not less than fifty-percent (50%) of his annual base salary if certain performance metrics determined by the Compensation Committee for the year ended December 31, 2009 were met.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company said that even though the metrics were met for 2009, the Compensation Committee requested that Mullen waive his cash bonus for 2010, 2011, and 2012. \u00a0Mullen agreed to do so.\u00a0 Since he made $725,000 in base salary during 2009, the cash bonus would have been at least $362,500 this year and at least $400,000 in 2011 and 2012.<\/p>\n

Instead, the new employment agreement states that Mullen\u2019s bonus eligibility through 2012 \u201cwill be based solely on his participation in the Company\u2019s annual incentive plan.” In a trade-off, the Compensation Committee increased Mullen’s annual incentive bonus target to 100% of his base salary, rather than the 90% target he had in 2009. \u00a0And it increased\u00a0Mullen\u2019s base salary from $725,000 to $800,000, although it should be noted that Mullen\u2019s salary did not change in 2008 or 2009.<\/p>\n

But there’s more! \u00a0It continues:<\/p>\n

\n

\u2026the Amendment terminates Mr. Mullen\u2019s right to be paid or reimbursed for personal travel expenses incurred by Mr. Mullen in commuting between Arizona and Colorado, as well as the tax gross-up related to such payments.\u00a0 The Amendment also deletes the 280G tax gross-up provision…In connection with the Amendment, the Compensation Committee also determined that, when granted, 50% of the annual equity grants for 2010 to Mr. Mullen will be performance-based instead of 100% time-based.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We don\u2019t read a lot of filings that document an executive\u2019s willingness to waive a bonus, give up the right to be reimbursed for personal travel costs and gross-ups, and adopt a performance-based system to determine whether he will receive half of his potential equity grants. But clearly it’s worth a rare footnoted Gold Star.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January is half over, the news from Haiti is heartbreaking, and right now it seems that the snow will never melt.\u00a0 In all, it\u2019s been a tough few weeks.\u00a0Fortunately, the\u00a08-K that Red Robin (RRGB) recently filed lets us focus for a moment on something positive and bestow footnoted\u2019s first Gold Star of 2010. Red Robins […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4072,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4072"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}