Waitr Holdings Inc., a Louisiana-based online food delivery business, added two new board members and signed a deal for its chief executive officer to get a bigger bonus if he stays through the end of his contract.
Charles Holzer and Buford Ortale were appointed to the board in late April, replacing two board members who resigned in October 2019. Waitr was out of compliance with the Nasdaq exchange for several months because of rules requiring a majority of directors be independent of the company and because it stock was trading below $1.
Holzer is a director of his family's real estate company and oversees the retail division of the family holdings with luxury retail tenants. Ortale is the founder of Sewanee Ventures, a private investment firm he founded in the 1990s. He is also partner at NTR, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm and partner at Armour Capital Management.
With the addition of the board members and its stock trading above $1 per share, the company appears to be back on track.
The company also bumped up the potential performance bonus for CEO and board chairman Carl Grimstad. The previous bonus was $3 million if the CEO remained in his role until 2022, but that's now $5 million, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission records.
Grimstad took over as CEO at the start of 2020. His employment agreement guarantees him a base salary of $83,333 each month and expires in January 2022. That's a total $999,996 annual base salary. The executive was also given 3.1 million in restricted stock units.
Waitr, which offers services across Louisiana and about 700 small- to mid-sized cities across the country, had a tumultuous 2019.
During the coronavirus pandemic with stay-at-home orders in place, Waitr has expanded some delivery areas and ventured beyond restaurant deliveries into groceries as well.
Waitr's stock was trading at $1.17 per share on Tuesday, up 8 cents or 7% for the day, but down from $10 per share in April 2019. Its market capitalization is now $100 million.
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