Delta Lowers Profit Targets as It Seeks to Boost CEO Isaac Dabah’s Pay

Isaac Dabah, the controlling shareholder and CEO of Delta Galil, the lingerie and apparel giant, will celebrate his 70th birthday in two months. Even at his age, people who know him say, he works at full speed. His home, they say, is a permanent seat on an airplane. He runs a company that employs 23,000 people worldwide, most of them in product manufacturing countries, Vietnam, Egypt, Thailand, Myanmar and China.

Dabah is also a billionaire who holds shares in his company, 44.3% of the equity, worth 1.9 billion shekels. That has not stopped him from seeking and upgrading his salary by tens of percent. At a shareholders meeting Delta has called for next month, the company is asking to raise Dabah’s pay as CEO and, along the way, perhaps as a mitigating factor, it cites the strengthening shekel against the dollar, which has not materially affected its results. Among its reasons for boosting the controlling owner’s pay, Delta notes that, “in shekel terms, there is a 10% decrease in Dabah’s total compensation under the new employment agreement.” And it is indeed correct. The new pay cost, if approved, will amount to 6.72 million shekels, compared with 7.5 million shekels two years ago. But Dabah lives in New York and ostensibly should be less affected by currency changes.

Moreover, the opposite is also true, if the shekel weakens again, for example because of a deterioration in the security situation, or because of declines in global markets, or intervention by the Bank of Israel due to pressure from exporters, Dabah’s shekel-based compensation cost will jump. In any case, if the new salary is approved, Dabah’s maximum pay cost will stand at $2.31 million, a 13.6% increase compared with his previous pay agreement from two years ago, partly because the company is seeking to raise his long-term bonus. In practice, the compensation is expected to rise much more, by no less than 29%, since in 2025 Dabah’s bonus did not meet the targets set for him by the company, בראשן, a net profit of $114 million. The company made $102.6 million then. Therefore, last year Dabah was not entitled to a bonus and earned a pay package of “only” $1.8 million.

Now Delta Galil is asking to raise compensation while at the same time lowering the company’s net profit targets to $105.5 million in the coming year, $109 million in 2027 and $113 million in 2028. In fact, Delta Galil seems quite certain Dabah will meet this profit target, since in the forecast it published for 2026, it expects to post net profit this year in the range of $116 million to $123 million. Under the proposed compensation agreement, Dabah’s base salary will rise by almost 6% to $900,000 a year and be indexed to US inflation. His annual bonus ceiling will also rise by the same rate to $900,000 a year, as will a multi-year bonus, for three years, which will jump by 140% to $1.2 million, or $400,000 a year.

Dabah’s compensation cost will be 115 times the company’s average compensation cost, the reason for the huge gap being the low pay cost in manufacturing countries, Vietnam and Egypt for example. In explaining the decision, Delta Galil, which also controls Delta Brands, the company’s Israel operation, but conducts most of its activity, more than 80%, outside Israel, and reports its results in dollars, says that Dabah’s compensation includes many areas of responsibility, such as CEO of the company, CEO of the US subsidiary and also chairman of the company in Israel. The company also pointed to Dabah’s “expertise, education, experience and skills in the textile and apparel industry, and his central contribution to managing the company and the group,” as well as the “expansion of the company’s presence and scope of activity in the US market, leading strategic acquisitions,” and more. Delta also notes that about 25% of other executives in the industry earn higher salaries.