AO.com to reward all staff through ambitious incentive plan

AO founder and chief executive John Roberts, who will donate 100% of any reward he receives “to help disadvantaged young people in the UK”, said: “This is the AO way of doing a value creation plan. The decision to create an opportunity for every AO employee to receive a meaningful reward for the value they create is one that I’m proud to tell my mum about.”

The programme, running over a five- to seven-year period, will reward value creation above a “hurdle” share price of of £5.23 – equivalent to £2.5bn market cap – and therefore “representing exceptional growth” of about 30% per annum.

Over that hurdle, 10% of the value created will be shared between all of AO’s employees. AO said the fact that “the overwhelming majority” would be distributed among all employees was in contrast to many other companies’ value creation plans.

Awards to executive directors will be capped at £20m, and to receve that the share price would need to reach at least £9.41 and be maintained for “at least” two further years.

Roberts said: “The AO VCP rewards exceptional performance and value creation and we will achieve it through our passion to serve customers brilliantly with a long-term lens. AO is now set up to benefit from the accelerated structural shift to online in the UK and Germany and our model is now truly scalable.

“It is a vote of confidence in our people and the future we’re building as well as the embodiment of our One AO model, because it rewards the exceptional value that the AO team is capable of creating together.”