To calculate CEO pay, Equilar adds salary, bonus, perks, stock awards, stock option awards and other pay components.
Stock awards can either be time-based, which means CEOs have to wait a certain amount of time to get them, or performance-based, which means they have to meet certain goals before getting them. Stock options usually give the CEO the right to buy shares in the future at the price they’re trading at when the options are granted. All are meant to tie the CEO’s pay to the company’s performance.
To determine what stock and option awards are worth, Equilar uses the value of an award on the day it’s granted, as recorded in the proxy statement. Actual values in the future can vary widely from what the company estimates.
Equilar calculated that the median 2024 pay for CEOs in the survey was $17.1 million. That’s the midpoint, meaning half the CEOs made more and half made less.
Here’s a breakdown of 2024 pay compared with 2023 pay. Because the AP looks at median numbers, the components of CEO pay do not add up to the total.
—Base salary: $1.3 million, up 4%
—Bonus, performance-based cash awards: $2.5 million, up 0.8%
—Perks: $286,343, up 21.5%
—Stock awards: $10.2 million, up 14.7%
—Option awards: $0 (More than half of the companies gave no option awards. The average option award was valued at $1.7 million.)
—Total: $17.1 million, up 9.7%