Cook earns nearly $100 million in 2021 The median apple employee compensation is nearly $70,000

A filing released Thursday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows Apple CEO Tim Cook received $98.73 million in compensation for fiscal 2021.

The documents show that most of Cook's compensation came from more than $82 million worth of shares granted to him by Apple. Apple's size, performance, and Cook's performance as CEO determine the company's stock rewards for Cook.

Over the past fiscal year, Apple has achieved excellent results. In fiscal year 2021, which ended last September, Apple's revenue grew 33 percent, with sales exceeding $365 billion. On the first day of 2021, Apple's market value once exceeded $3 trillion, and the company's stock price rose more than 35% in the past year.

In addition to the stock reward, Cook's annual salary includes a $3 million salary, a $12 million performance bonus to achieve Apple's financial and environmental sustainability goals, and $1.39 million in other compensation, such as vacation expenses, air travel, security, and more.

"Cook has led Apple through an extraordinary decade, and it's also the first time Cook has received an equity prize since he became Ceo of Apple in August 2011." Apple said in the filing. Cook's salary in 2021 has nearly quadrupled compared to a year ago.

The filing also shows that the median compensation for Apple employees in 2021 is $68,254. Cook's annual salary is equivalent to 1447 times the median annual salary of Apple employees. However, Apple said that because the median of Apple's employees is determined differently, it is not appropriate to compare this ratio with those reported by other companies.

Apple said the board's compensation committee also considered Apple's profitability compared to its peers, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta, to determine the equity award for Cook.

Since Apple launched its first iPhone in January 2007, Apple's stock price has risen by about 5,800 percent, far outpacing the around 230 percent increase in the S&P 500 over the same period. In the three years from August 25, 2018 to August 24, 2021, Cook led Apple to record a return on capital of more than 190% for shareholders.

Over the past decade, Cook has not only seen the launch of new product lines that define Apple as a modern computing giant, including the iPhone, iPad and iMac, but has also dominated the launch of the Apple Watch and Apple headphones.

On the Fortune 500 list released last year, Apple rose to No. 6 and continues to be the world's most profitable company, with a profit of $57.4 billion in 2020.

Apple, under Cook's leadership, is transforming from hardware to software. While the iPhone remains Apple's largest source of revenue, its share of Apple's revenue has fallen from 60 percent in fiscal 2018 to around 52 percent in fiscal year 2021.

Investors are now betting on Apple to open up new markets, such as self-driving cars and virtual reality. At present, Apple's on-board system CarPlay has been applied in many vehicles, and in the future, Apple may integrate the automatic driving software system into the whole vehicle.

Cook has made it clear that he is interested in self-driving cars. He said: "Autonomous driving is almost the parent of all of Apple's AI projects, and it is also the most difficult to overcome, but automation will be a very important core technology of Apple, and we will see where it will take us in the future." ”