Indie Semiconductor (INDI -8.92%) shares were jammed in the slow lane as the abbreviated stock trading week kicked off on Tuesday. On news that the assisted-driving chip developer’s top executives were subject to severe pay restrictions, investors aggressively traded out of the company. Its stock closed the day almost 9% lower in price, a far steeper fall than the 2.1% slide of the bellwether S&P 500 index.

Slimmer paychecks for execs

Indie disclosed in a regulatory filing that several of its C-suite denizens and founders would take new, microscopic base pay packages. CFO Thomas Schiller and two unnamed co-founders are now to receive a base salary of $1 per year, a move the company said was “at the initiation and request” of those individuals.

The base salary for Raja Bal, the chief accounting officer who is also listed as the acting CFO, and unnamed fellow top managers will receive a less drastic cut. Their annual salaries are to be decreased by 20%, although this is temporary and only in force from this past Sept. 1 through March 31, 2025.

Base salaries are the foundations of an executive’s pay. Almost always with publicly traded companies, such people are eligible for awards in the form of cash, stock, or both. Those bonuses are usually linked to individual and/or companywide performance.

Defense mode

This news wasn’t entirely a surprise, as Indie has been battening down the hatches on the great electric vehicle (EV) slowdown of 2024. At the end of last month, it launched its workforce reduction plan, which will see it try to “improve operational efficiencies while still investing in key growth areas of the business.” Roughly 50 Indie workers were affected by this move, the company said.