Vizio Hikes Base Pay of CEO, COO Retroactive to Q1

Vizio’s board on July 29 raised the base salary of Chairman-CEO William Wang to $900,000 retroactively to Q1 and to $975,000 for the rest of 2021, said an 8-K filed Monday at the SEC. It also boosted the base pay of President-Chief Operating Officer Ben Wong to $900,000 for Q1 and to $925,000 for the rest of 2021. Vizio also hiked quarterly and yearly bonus targets for both executives. Wang and Wong each drew $425,000 base salaries in 2020 and 2019, said a March 16 registration statement filed days before Vizio went public. Vizio upgraded the appearance and functionality of its WatchFree+ free video streaming offering, adding an “intuitive” new program guide and expanded content “custom-curated” using “first-party viewership data” collected through its proprietary Inscape audience-measurement service, said a separate announcement Monday. The program guide supports voice navigation for new SmartCast TVs that come with the latest Vizio voice remote, introduced in June (see 2106020050), it said. Vizio reports Q2 results Wednesday after the markets close.