[At a Crossroads for Listed Companies] ‘Neogen’ Audin Futures, CEO Choi Young-wook’s 1.2 Billion KRW Salary Despite 3 Years of Losses②

[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Hyowon] It has been revealed that Choi Young-wook, CEO of Audin Futures, which owns the cosmetics brand 'NEOGEN,' received an annual salary of 1.2 billion KRW each year despite the company recording tens of billions of won in losses for three consecutive years until last year.

Choi Young-wook, CEO of Audin Futures.

According to the Financial Supervisory Service's electronic disclosure on the 6th, it was confirmed that Audin Futures' CEO Choi Young-wook received an annual salary of 1.2 billion KRW last year. Since 2019, he has received about 3.5 billion KRW in annual salary.

The company stated, "The basic salary of the CEO was set at 1.2 billion KRW from July 2019 by comprehensively reflecting job duties, position, years of service, leadership, expertise, and company contribution through the internal evaluation and compensation committee." This means he was paid 100 million KRW monthly as salary.

CEO Choi Young-wook, originally from Amorepacific, founded Audin Futures in December 2000. The company grew into a cosmetics specialist through ODM and design businesses and started its own brand business by launching 'NEOGEN DERMALOGY' in 2011. It was listed on the KOSDAQ market in 2017.

After listing, Audin Futures was thriving with sales of 89.4 billion KRW and operating profit of 8.1 billion KRW in 2018, but recorded a large-scale deficit in 2019. On a consolidated basis in 2019, Audin Futures' sales were 54.1 billion KRW, and operating loss was about 20.7 billion KRW.

Sales of mask packs, which accounted for about 20% of total sales, plummeted by 72.5%, and product sales also decreased by 69.2% due to a decline in distribution business to China. The operating loss was caused by a large provision for bad debts. Audin Futures set 20.7 billion KRW, equivalent to 88% of total accounts receivable of 23.4 billion KRW in 2019, as a provision for bad debts at once.

In this way, while the company was staggering with a large deficit in July 2019, CEO Choi raised his own annual salary to 1.2 billion KRW. This was more than double the late 400 million KRW annual salary he received in 2018. Although the company recorded tens of billions of won in operating losses for three consecutive years until last year, CEO Choi's annual salary remained at 1.2 billion KRW each year.

Lee Kyung-soo, chairman of Cosmax, a cosmetics ODM company with sales 36 times larger than Audin Futures, received 730 million KRW in annual salary last year. Yoon Sang-hyun, vice chairman of Kolmar Korea, which is 35 times larger, also received 1 billion KRW last year. Cosmax and Kolmar Korea's sales last year were 1.5915 trillion KRW and 1.5863 trillion KRW, respectively. Audin Futures' sales last year were 43.9 billion KRW.

CEO Choi's salary also shows a large gap compared to company employees. As of last year, the average annual salary of Audin Futures employees was about 37.07 million KRW. CEO Choi's salary exceeds 32 times the average employee salary. Additionally, the number of employees decreased from 160 in 2019 to 133 last year.

Regarding this, an Audin Futures official stated, "Since CEO Choi has been steadily running the company since its founding in the long term, the salary was set based on internal grounds."

Meanwhile, Audin Futures operates cosmetics brands such as NEOGEN DERMALOGY, NEOGEN Code9, NEOGEN AgeCure, re:p, Sur.medic+, and is engaged in cosmetics original design manufacturing (ODM) business.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.