It certainly has not been a great time to own Appen Ltd (ASX: APX) shares.
Over the last 12 months, the struggling artificial intelligence (AI) data services company's shares have lost approximately 73% of their value.
To put that into context, if you had made a $20,000 investment a year ago, you'd have just $5,400 left.
Whereas if you had invested those same funds into the popular Betashares Nasdaq 100 ETF (ASX: NDQ), you would have seen your investment grow 45% to $29,000.
That's a massive $23,600 difference in value!
In light of this, the company's shareholders may not be best pleased to learn that its newly appointed CEO, Ryan Kolln, who was COO for much of the last 12 months, has just converted a large number of performance rights into Appen with zero cost.
Appen CEO picks up free shares
According change of director's interest notice, Kolln vested 166,850 performance rights into the same number of Appen shares on 18 March without spending a cent.
These shares have a market value of $111,789.50 at the current share price.
Though, had Appen's performance not been so dreadful over the last 12 months, those shares would have been worth considerably more.
A year ago, its shares were fetching $2.31, which would have given them a market value of $384,799.80.
Nevertheless, it begs the question, why would a company reward its executives with performance rights when they have destroyed so much shareholder wealth in recent years?
As a reminder, the Appen share price was trading as high as $35+ in 2020. Since then it has shed 98% of its value and trades at just 67 cents today.
