Executive Incentive Plans

Executive Incentive Plans, an Equilar publication, examines the performance metrics associated with short- and long-term incentive awards granted to CEOs in the Equilar 500. The study also features a more in-depth examination of the most recent long-term incentive awards granted to CEOs at Equilar 100 companies—a subset of the Equilar 500. For this analysis, data includes performance metric measurement approaches, weightings, performance ranges (expressed as a percentage of target performance and target payout), and relative TSR percentile goal ranges.

Key Findings

• Relative TSR was featured as a metric in 70.4% of Equilar 500 CEO LTIPs, up 10% since 2021 
• Revenue was the most common Equilar 500 CEO STIP metric in 2025, used in 46.7% of plans
• 39.4% of Equilar 100 companies set target performance for relative TSR at the 50th percentile, the most common approach
• Relative TSR metrics were weighted at 100% by 36.1% of Equilar 100 companies in 2025