Using CompanyIQ^® executive compensation data, this report analyzes long-term incentive plans for S&P 500 CEOs from 2019-2021.

Key findings include:

• Roughly 80% of S&P 500 companies employed performance-based LTI awards from 2019 to 2021.
• The prevalence of performance periods in the range of two to four years declined from 93.4% of LTI metrics in 2019 to 91.4% in 2021 YTD (3-year periods: 2019 – 90%, 2021 YTD – 88.8%), while one-year performance periods gained 3.5 percentage points from 2019 to 8.1% of metrics in 2021 YTD.
• Total shareholder return (TSR) was the most prevalent performance metric in every year of the S&P 500 study, gaining six percentage points from 63% of companies in 2019 to 69% in 2021 YTD.
• Earnings metrics and return on capital metrics were the second and third most prevalent LTI metrics in the S&P 500, used by at least a third of companies from 2019 and reaching 37% and 33%, respectively, in 2021 YTD.
• S&P 500 companies in the infrastructure and extractives & minerals sectors incorporated a TSR metric 92% of the time, the highest in the study, in 2021 YTD while 27% of consumer goods companies used TSR, the lowest, in 2020.