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 as a percentage of target performance and as a percentage of target payout, and relative TSR percentile goal ranges. 

About the Report

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Key Findings

• Relative TSR was featured as a metric in 69.5% of Equilar 500 CEO LTIPs, up 20.7% since 2020 
• Revenue was the most common Equilar 500 CEO STIP metric in 2024, used in 47.7% of plans
• Across the Equilar 100, the most common comparator group was a performance peer group, used by 41.9% of relative metrics in 2024
• Relative TSR metrics were weighted at 100% by 34.3% Equilar 100 companies in 2024, the most frequent weighting in the study