Juul’s Employees Get a Special $2 Billion Bonus — an Average of $1.3 Million Per Person
Altria, the owner Marlboro, bought 35% stake of the e-cigarette company Juul, for $12.8 billion. As part of the deal, Altria paid a $2 billion dividend that will be split among Juul’s employees as a bonus, according to person familiar with the matter. While that comes out to about $1.3 million very person, the exact amount of money each person gets will depend on how long he/she has worked at Juul and how much equity he/she owns, the person explained.
Juul is now valued at $38 billion, making it one of Silicon Valley‘s most valuable startups, following Thursday’s announcement of a deal with the tobacco giant, the source said.
The news comes after the e-cigarette company decided to stop selling flavored pods in stores and stop social media marketing to end the “epidemic” of teenage vaping in November.
The Food and Drug Administration was preparing to announce similar restrictions on Juul after it said that a “public health tragedy” is unfolding with a large number of U.S. teenagers using the product illegally. Juul controls 74% of the e-cigarette market of America.
Juul says its goal has never been to attract young people who generally do not meet the requirements of buying e-cigarettes over the age of 18. Instead, the company says it wants to offer an alternative to toxin-heavy cigarettes to people who’ve already smoked.
(Although Juul and other e-cigarettes have fewer toxins compared with tobacco cigarettes, they offer higher doses of nicotine and are considered highly addictive.)
“We do not want people who doesn’t smoke or already use nicotine, to use the products of JUUL,” Kevin Burns, JUUL‘s chief executive, said in a statement last month. “We certainly don’t want young people to use this product. It is bad for public health and bad for our mission.”
The Food and Drug Administration raided Juul offices and seized more than 1,000 pages of documents to look for “further documentation related to Juul’s sales and marketing practices” in October, according to Today.
The research is the continuation of the FDA‘s investigation into the rise of vaping among teenagers. FDA first asked for information about Juul’s marketing practices in April and Juul has said they have provided more than 50,000 documents since then.
The undercover operation this summer initially found that many national retailers, including Walgreens and 7-Eleven, were selling e-cigarettes to teenagers illegally, and the Food and Drug Administration sent warning letters to Juul and other manufacturers warning them that they were not doing enough to limit the use of e-cigarettes by teenagers.
Juul is particularly popular with high school students because of their easily concealable size. They look like a flash drive and have a variety of fruit flavors such as mango and coconut.
Ryan
Ryan is a writer, editor and content creator who spends most of his time bringing the interesting, entertaining, original and well-written articles to vapers. He believes that vaping is not only a healthier alternative to smoking, but also a great experience of life.
