Nine of Telkom’s top executives have scored R57 million in shares under its forfeitable plan.

All the shares are subject to vesting against various performance conditions until the 2029 financial year.

It is rather unusual for 100% of shares awarded to vest in a single year. Typically, these would vest over a three- or five-year basis, based on targets set by the board.

Telkom Exec’s payday

Group CEO Serame Taukobong received the most, valued at R16.5 million, with the CFO receiving shares worth R7.6 million.

The awards extend to various executives in its business including the CEOs of its three largest divisions: Telkom Consumer, Openserve and BCX (Hasain Motlekar is acting CEO).

Participant	Role	Shares	Value
Serame Taukobong	Group CEO	264 318	R16.5m
Nonkululeko Dlamini	Group CFO	122 353	R7.6m
Beauty Apleni	CEO: Openserve	104 365	R6.5m
Melody Lekota	Chief HR Officer	83 082	R5.2m
Lunga Siyo	CEO: Telkom Consumer and Small Business	111 173	R6.9m
Sello Mmakau	Group chief digital officer	79 960	R4.9m
Mpho McNamee	Chief of corporate affairs	75 636	R4.7m
Hasnain Motlekar	Acting CEO: BCX	38 851	R2.4m
Ephenia Motlhamme	Company secretary	32 694	R2m
TOTAL		912 432	R56.9m

Under the group’s long-term performance plan, it has key weightings where it measures against headline earnings per share (Heps) growth, total shareholder return (both 30% of the measure), along with return on invested capital (ROIC) at 25% and various environmental, sustainability and governance metrics, which comprise 15% of the yardstick.

Telkom says the total deemed value of these awards “was calculated by multiplying each participant’s guaranteed pay by a target weighting, expressed as a percentage that varies in accordance with the participant’s employee level in the company.

“This total deemed value of the award is then divided by the volume average share price (VWAP) of a Telkom share trading on the JSE after the Telkom Board meeting. This then amounts to the number of share awards allocated to each participant.”

Telkom’s overall remuneration

Telkom has yet to disclose the overall remuneration of its executive directors or prescribed officers (comprising most of the members in the table above) for the FY26 financial year.

This will be made available in its integrated report, to be published towards the end of July.

At the end of the FY2025, Taubokong received remuneration totalling R33.29 million, an increase of nearly 270% on the prior year. The bulk of this was long-term incentives (LTI), which comprised R13.4 million plus a short-term incentive (STI) of R10 million.

Dlamini received remuneration last year of practically R13 million, which was roughly evenly split between guaranteed pay (R6.8 million) and short-term incentives (R6.1 million).

Remuneration committee’s focus

Despite being a state-owned company, the group has enjoyed strong support for its remuneration in what has historically been non-binding votes on both the policy and remuneration.

Last year, it achieved support of 96% on both the policy and implementation, plus a 99.6% approval when it comes to non-executive directors’ fees.

The group’s Remuneration Committee says its focus remains to:

Drive a high-performance culture by monitoring the implementation of the retention strategy and [remuneration] scheme;
Improve remuneration decisions, with ESG metrics or performance conditions included in the STI and LTI scheme rules;
Review the remuneration policy to ensure it aligns with the Companies Amendment Act and is fit for purpose to attract and retain talent; and
Balance the remuneration mix for executive directors and group prescribed officers to continuously align their interests with those of shareholders.

At the end of last year (31 April), Taubokong had outstanding, unvested shares of nearly one million, which at the current share price equates to R57 million.

The group has a market value of R30 billion, and its share price is flat year-to-date. Shares are up 24% over the past year.

This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.