Top Execs Buck Micron Trend Officers Get Big Bonuses Despite Dismal Year For Memory Chip Manufacturer

Despite the financial woes that caused Micron Technology Inc. to scale back expansion plans and impose a hiring freeze, the company’s executive officers received hefty raises and bonuses in fiscal 1996.

Leading the way was Steve Appleton, who received a bonus of about $1.5 million on top of his salary of $525,769 for total compensation of $2,078,948.

According to a Micron proxy statement, Appleton’s 1996 bonus included annual installments of company performance bonuses for fiscal 1994, 1995 and 1996.

Tyler Lowrey, who was vice chairman and chief operations officer, also made more than $2 million in fiscal 1996. He made the same 1996 salary as Appleton - $525,769 - plus a bonus of $1.53 million.

Appleton was fired as chief executive on Jan. 18 but was reinstated five weeks later. In the interim, Lowrey was chief executive.

During the fiscal year, prices for Micron’s mainstay product, dynamic random access memory chips, fell 75 percent to 80 percent. DRAMs accounted for 57 percent of Micron’s net sales during the year.

Because of the price drop, the company imposed a midyear hiring freeze, since lifted; reassigned 200 administrative employees to production jobs; and mothballed its planned $2.5 billion manufacturing plant at Lehi, Utah.

Post Falls was among a dozen communities that bid for the fabrication plant in early 1995. Lehi’s proximity to large university engineering programs in Salt Lake City contributed to it winning one of the most hotly contested economic recruiting prizes this decade.

Micron’s search came at the peak of its growth as a memory chip manufacturer, making it a very attractive company to bring to a community, especially one as starved for good jobs as Kootenai County.

“I dodged that bullet,” local economic development recruiter Bob Potter said earlier this year when it was announced the plant was being mothballed. “Everyone who knows that business knows there’s tremendous ups and downs.”

Micron’s stock peaked at $94.37 per share of common stock in September of 1995 and hit a low of $16.62 in July of this year. On Friday, it was trading at $30 per share.

According to the proxy statement, some of the officers’ bonuses jumped more than $250,000 over the year before. Bonuses included profit-sharing, awards for patent filings and performance awards.

Micron representative Julie Nash said all of the company’s 15 officers took pay cuts after the company announced a hiring freeze in June.

Wilbur Stover Jr., vice president for finance and chief financial officer, received salary and bonuses of $1.175 million in 1996, up from the $810,000 he received the year before.

Edward Heitzeberg, vice president for design, product engineering and quality assurance, received just over $1 million, compared with $813,000 in fiscal 1995.

Donald Baldwin, sales vice president, was paid $930,000 and made $721,000 for a similar period of 1995.

In fiscal 1996, executive and other officers also negotiated severance agreements that ensure they receive their salaries, bonuses, executive bonuses, benefits and stock options for two years after being terminated.

, DataTimes