How to Research Executive Compensation Data: Two Paths

Yes, Calcbench now offers expanded new troves of data about executive compensation, including standard disclosures such as the Summary Compensation Table (which companies have reported in proxy statements for years) and new disclosures including pay-vs.-performance metrics and our favorite, “compensation actually paid.”

OK, cool cool, we have the data. So how can Calcbench users actually find it? Today we’ll give you three easy-to-follow examples. 


For a Single Company


Let’s say you are researching a single company’s disclosures. Typically, the place to start is the Disclosure & Footnotes Query page. You can find that by scanning your choices along the top of the screen and finding the one that says “Disclosures.” See Figure 1, below (and look for the red arrow).



Once at the Disclosure & Footnotes page, you’ll next need to select the executive compensation disclosures as the specific data you want to see. Those disclosures are filed annually in the proxy statement, not in the quarterly financial statements or the annual 10-K. 


To find them, simply look to the left-hand side of your screen. You’ll see the list of disclosures that Calcbench offers. See Figure 2, below.



Skim all the way to the bottom of that list of disclosures, and you’ll see the compensation disclosures at the bottom under “Related Documents.” See Figure 3, below. 



Click on the choice you’d like, and that data will appear on your screen.


For Groups of Companies


Calcbench subscribers can also search larger groups of companies for compensation disclosures too. First, select the peer group you want to research. (We have a separate post explaining how to select a peer group, or you can use one of our pre-designed groups such as the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrials.) 


For our purposes today, we’ll use the Dow Jones Industrials. Then you go to our XBRL Data page, which lets you search for disclosures by their individual XBRL tag (since all compensation disclosures are tagged). 


Step 2 is to select the fiscal year and period you want to research. You can select any fiscal year you’d like (although the pay versus performance disclosures are new, so if you search prior years you’ll get no results because none exist). For the fiscal period, however, you must select “Y” for the whole year because compensation disclosures only exist in the annual proxy statement.



Step 3 is to select the “statement type” you want from the drop-down menu provided. Scroll down until you reach “proxy statement pay versus performance” and select that choice. 


Then just press search, and you’ll get the results. In our example above, searching the Dow Jones Industrials for their 2024 proxies, we had 866 facts or data points. From here, you can export the data into Excel for your own modeling. That’s all there is to it. 

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