> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.businessbagel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Woolworths has tied its new CEO's R51 million award to a share price that has halved in three years - URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/woolworths-ceo-r51m-award-share-price-targets/ - Published: 2026-10-02T02:30:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-02T02:29:59.000Z - Description: Woolworths' annual report spells out what new CEO Sam Ngumeni must deliver by June 2031 to keep a share award valued at R51 million, and half of it hangs on a share price that would have to more than double. - Author: Christian Maidman - Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News Sam Ngumeni took over as Woolworths' group chief executive on 1 June, and the shares he now answers for trade at about R37\. That is roughly half what they were worth three years ago, and the 2026 annual report, published on Wednesday, shows how much of his pay depends on getting them back up. The centrepiece is a one-off award of 995,715 Woolworths shares, bought on the open market in March and held in escrow for five years. It was valued at R51 million, on top of R17 million in guaranteed pay, but it is not cash in hand. Ngumeni only keeps the shares if Woolworths hits three targets by June 2031, and he can lose whatever he misses. The deadline lines up with his career. Woolworths retires its executive directors at 63, so Ngumeni's time in the job and the award's test date both run out around 2031. ## Half of it rides on R80 Half the award depends on the share price. The shares have to reach R80 for Ngumeni to get anything from that half, and R100 for all of it, which from about R37 means more than doubling just to clear the lower bar. That bar has moved further away since March. The shares bought for the award then cost about R51.44 each, and Business Day described R100 at the time as nearly double the share price; from R37 it is more than two and a half times. The rest is about the business. Three-tenths of the award needs profit per share to grow 10% a year, rising to 15% a year for the full slice, and the final fifth needs Woolworths to earn more on its money than that money costs it, by a gap of five to eight percentage points. ## Food has to carry it Ngumeni's route to those numbers runs through the food hall. "I firmly believe that food sits at the centre of our opportunities," he says in the annual report, and the group is being reorganised around it. Food is the part that is working: its sales grew 5.7% and it held its margin, while fashion dragged its division down and promotions and stock clearance ate into margins. He has not dressed up the rest. In his letter to shareholders he calls the results "not good enough relative to the strength of \[the\] brand", and the report now ranks failing to deliver on the group's ambitions as its top risk for the 2027 financial year, up from sixth. The spending is already under way. Woolworths put R2.4 billion into new stores, food supply chain capacity and digital systems in 2026, led by a new-generation store first piloted at Tygervalley in Cape Town, a format it now plans to roll out faster. The shares have until June 2031 to follow.