‘I feel very comfortable’: Xero boss brushes off investors’ pay concerns
Wednesday, 3 September 2025
Xero’s chief executive has brushed off concerns about a sizeable protest vote against her $26 million pay package ahead of the company’s Xerocon event in Brisbane.
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy spoke to The Post ahead of Xerocon, the company’s flagship technology and innovation conference for accountants and bookkeepers that use the Xero platform. It is sometimes referred to as the 'Coachella for accountants”.
Singh Cassidy became the chief executive of Xero in early 2023, taking over from Steve Vamos who headed the company for five years. She has been mostly lauded for her actions in the role, with a Forbes headline from last year reading “Xero Hero: How Sukhinder Singh Cassidy reignited a $20 billion giant”.
But the chief executive has this year spearheaded the purchase of a fairly low-profile $4 billion US payment platform, causing some shareholders to question how the company was spending money - including on executive pay.
At the company’s annual general meeting last month, almost 49% of shareholders taking part in the vote rejected her US$15.2m (NZ$26m) pay packet for the year.
But the downvote was not a binding decision, and didn’t mean executive pay would be cut.
Sitting down with The Post, the Silicon Valley-based boss was excited but collected about the upcoming few days of product launches and accounting-inspiration, despite a schedule packed with executive meetings.
And she was unfazed by questions about her pay. Singh Cassidy was confident about her remuneration and claimed a majority of institutional investors backed the decision. The Aotearoa-based company would need to provide the right incentives for global talent, other executive board members said after the vote.
When asked whether the Wellington-based company planned to rethink its executive remuneration, Singh Cassidy said all major shareholders were on board with the decision following a year of consultation prior to her pay being confirmed.
“[There are] no plans to change,” she said. “[Our shareholders] concluded that consultation in December and my pay was public then.”
Before the AGM, advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis both recommended voting against Xero’s executive pay resolutions due to concerns about how executive rewards aligned with their performance.
But Singh Cassidy said the downvote was just a difference in opinion on how performance was measured: “Proxies have a different view than my board and I on what pay for performance is.”
Because her compensation was mainly in shareholding options, and only became valuable if Xero’s share price went up, she said her payout depended entirely on Xero’s market performance.
“It’s very, very heavily at-risk pay, and nobody makes money unless the stock price goes up so I feel very comfortable with it.”
The baseline remuneration for Singh Cassidy was $9.06m for the year, on top of various stock holding options, which she said were at high risk in a volatile market. The total package was about $26m and would be vested to the end of 2028.
Xero shares were trading at A$158.99 on Tuesday.
Melio bet
Xero’s June purchase of US-Israel payments platform Melio for $4.4 billion, to lift the company’s value and its US presence, is described by analysts as the company’s most ambitious expansion yet.
The deal valued Melio at more than 13 times its revenue in March of US$187m, and was before the US company had reached profitability.
But after the purchase, 17% of Xero’s overall revenue would be coming out of the US.
“Xero has been in the US for 10 years and we built a good product, but it is an intensely competitive market,” Singh Cassidy said.
Xero already handled payments through invoicing but lacked a full bill pay solution: “Payments is one of the biggest small-medium-business pain points in the US is managing your bills.”
The CEO didn’t confirm where the acquisition would take the company in terms of revenue or global share market but it would add around 80,000 subscribers, complementing Xero’s existing 400,000 in the US and Canada.
“Melio's ARPU (average revenue per user) is close to over $2000 a year, right? Xero's ARPU is in the hundreds of dollars a year … you have increased customer value for every customer that comes onto the platform,” she said.
The acquisition was expected to bring gains to the company by the end of 2028.
“We’ve been clear about our priorities and the investments required,” Singh Cassidy said. “The job now is execution.”
Xero raised A$1.85b (NZ$2b) for the purchase, with institutional shareholders providing the bulk of the capital for the deal.
On top of that, a retail share purchase plan of up to A$200m was extended to retail shareholders, while the company secured a US$400m revolving credit facility, and used US$600m of its existing cash reserves.
Australia remained Xero’s biggest market in the last year with revenue of $955m, $222m of that from Aotearoa. The UK generated $578m, while North America saw the smallest revenue at $139m. The rest of the world brought in $209m.
Alka Prasad travelled to Brisbane courtesy of Xero.