Management and incentives

Meta Platforms, Inc. META

$1 is Mark Zuckerberg's salary, and he takes no bonus and no equity, so Meta's pay plan is an instruction to the four executives below him: a bonus targeted at 200% of earnings, paid at a company performance percentage of 115% for 2025 that the board set by judgment against four unweighted priorities. Revenue is the only financial measure Meta names as linking pay to performance, and revenue grew 28% last quarter while operating income fell 8%, so no part of the plan asks what the growth costs.

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Meta Platforms, Inc. METAThe bet you're really making is that billions of people keep scrolling Instagram and Facebook every day, and advertisers keep paying more to reach them. You're betting that money holds up while Meta spends a staggering sum building AI, tens of billions a year on chips and data centers, long before anyone knows whether that AI earns its keep. Right now the ads are booming and the spending is biting: sales grew 28% last quarter while profit per share fell 13%, because costs are climbing faster than revenue. You pay about 23 times last year's earnings, near the low end of where this stock has traded since 2014, and roughly half what its big-tech peers fetch. Company reportSep 6 Adobe Inc. ADBEAdobe paid Shantanu Narayen $51.2 million for fiscal 2025, and over 90% of his target package was equity graded on two things: the new subscription dollars Adobe adds each year, and whether the stock beats the Nasdaq 100 over three calendar years. The stock half paid 41% and then 45% in the two most recent closed cycles and all three open windows sit underwater, so the pay now rides on the subscription number alone, which points to price increases, paid AI tiers and free-to-paid conversion rather than deals, because the plan strips acquisitions out. Management and incentivesSep 20 AppLovin Corporation APPAppLovin paid Adam Foroughi $12,969,001 in 2025, and every dollar above his $400,000 salary arrived as 20,236 restricted shares that vest on four calendar dates with no target, no hurdle and no performance condition of any kind. The company states in the same proxy that it used no financial performance measure to link pay to results, which leaves the share price as the only thing that pays him, and he holds 61.6% of the vote over everything that touches it. Management and incentivesSep 20 GoDaddy Inc. GDDYThe bet you're really making is that the millions of small businesses and solo operators who run their websites, email, and domains through GoDaddy keep paying every year, and keep buying more from it. You're betting the newer, higher-margin work, taking card payments and building online stores, grows faster than the old domain-and-hosting business it was built on. Right now it is going well: revenue rose 6.6% to the biggest quarter in the company's history, and operating profit jumped 32% as costs came down. You pay about 15 times last year's earnings and under 14 times next year's, among the lowest the stock has fetched since it listed in 2015, with the shares down a third from their high. Company reportSep 7