SiliconBeat

Tuesday night, as we trolled through SEC filings from earlier in the day while listening to
primary election returns we came across an 8-K filing from SunPower reporting details of its newly adopted “Key Employee Quarterly Key Initiative Bonus Plan” (That’s what it’s called, honest).

Before our eyes glazed over we came across this non-sequitur news near the bottom: “effective as of January 31, 2008, PM Pai resigned as the Chief Operating Officer of the Company.”

Um, that seemed kinda “material” to us, especially for a company whose sales more than tripled last year, along with its stock price, as it took advantage of the mania for the solar energy systems in which its semiconductors are used. We assumed we’d missed a press release prior to this filing, but couldn’t find one on our Bloomberg box nor on SunPower’s Web site.

As part of his severance agreement, Pai is going “to provide certain services to the Company on a part-time basis through July 31, 2008 to facilitate the transition of responsibilities,” for which he’ll be paid $15,333 per month for the first three months and $13,800 per month for the last three months. SunPower will continue to pay Pai’s “existing level of housing and other expenses associated with his residence in the Philippines, and the Company will reimburse Mr. Pai for up to $25,000 of
relocation costs.”

Oh yeah, and “In exchange for a general release by Mr. Pai and his agreement to certain
non-competition and other conditions, the Company will pay him an additional $13,800.00 per month” for five months from August through December.

No reason was given for why Pai is leaving. We noticed that he exercised his option to buy 22,500 shares of SunPower for $3.30 each Jan. 30, the day before he quit, selling them the same day for $73.19, netting a $1.57 million profit. They closed Tuesday at $66.64.