Just eight months after leaving one of the most powerful jobs at Citigroup for a dream of dot-com riches at Priceline.com, Heidi Miller is calling it quits.
The 46-year-old financial wizard’s bushels of Priceline options are worthless, though they could have brought her $125 million had the company’s stock not crashed.
To add insult to option injury, Miller may also have to pay back a $3 million Priceline loan the company agreed to forgive if she remained there for five years.
In announcing Miller’s resignation yesterday after markets closed, Priceline also said it will fire 16 percent of its work force to help make ends meet.
Priceline said Miller was leaving to “pursue opportunities and apply her talents in a more established business environment.” Bob Mylod, the senior vice president of finance, will replace her.
Just last year, Fortune magazine dubbed Miller the second-most powerful woman on Wall Street.
Priceline, whose spokesman is William Shatner, is still reeling from a major setback after airlines cut back this season on selling tickets through the online service, whose main pitch is “name your own price” for airline tickets and other services.
Priceline this year also scrapped its name-your-own-price for groceries and gasoline.
The twin blows of Miller’s departure and the layoffs came during the company’s announcement of its third-quarter results, which produced a loss of a penny a share despite a doubling in revenue. Wall Street had expected the losses.
Priceline’s stock had closed at $6.84, up 65.6 cents, but plunged in after-hours trading on the news of the shakeup, falling another 20 percent to $5.39.
Priceline said it was laying off 87 people from its 535-member work force. The layoffs and other changes would result in a fourth-quarter charge of $9 million.
Miller, one of the highest-ranking female executives in America, left her seven-figure CFO job at banking giant Citigroup in late February and accepted a $300,000-a-year post as Priceline’s CFO.
Her sign-on package was largely options, which at the time were potentially lucrative but now are worthless.
She got options to buy some 2.5 million shares at $55 each and another 1.5 million shares at $90 each. She could have made as much as $125 million on the package had the stock remained at the $100 level.
Miller was recruited by Priceline Chairman Richard Braddock, who had worked with her at Citicorp. Braddock’s own stake in Priceline has dropped a staggering $1.1 billion in value in eight months.
When she joined Priceline, Miller said she wasn’t motivated entirely by money but also by a desire to take a larger role in corporate decision-making.
The stock has dropped 96 percent from its $165 peak in April 1999, wiping out about $26.4 billion on paper.
Priceline reported a net loss of $2 million, compared with a pro forma loss of $12 million, or 8 cents per share, in the prior year’s quarter.
Revenue jumped to $341 million from $152 million a year earlier.
“While we are disappointed in our airline ticket sales revenue for third quarter, we believe that the business made solid progress on several fronts,” said Priceline President Daniel Schulman.
“Our total customer base grew to 8 million. Repeat usage also grew, with slightly more than half of all purchase offers coming from repeat customers.”
Its “Star Trek” spokesman, Shatner, has lost as much as $9 million on shares he got a year ago for the original “Big – really big” radio commercials.