Research · State of Stock-Based Compensation 2026
A reference dataset on how stock-based compensation is showing up across US-listed company income statements. $386.7B recognized across 1,588 US-listed companies with material SBC, each tied to their most recent completed fiscal year (FY2024–2026 depending on fiscal calendar) and a primary annual filing on www.sec.gov (10-K, or 20-F / 40-F for foreign issuers). Sortable and searchable across every issuer.
Key Findings · Most Recent Fiscal Year · 1,588 US-listed companies
$386.7B
Total stock-based compensation across 1,588 US-listed companies with material SBC, each measured in their most recent completed fiscal year.
10.3%
Aggregate SBC as a share of the most recent fiscal year's operating cash flow. The median company runs 9.0%.
584/1,588
Companies where the most recent fiscal year's stock-based comp exceeded full-year net income. Includes 452 companies that did not turn a profit. Among profitable companies only: 132.
40%
Share of total report SBC concentrated in just 25 names. The other 1,563 companies combined contribute the remaining 60%.
The Full Table · 1,588 Companies
| Company | Sector | SBC (FY) | % Rev | % OCF | % NI | Net Income | SBC YoY | FY | Source |
|---|
The Market Heatmap
Each tile is one company. Tile area is proportional to that company's stock-based comp dollars. Click any tile for the full breakdown. Toggle the color encoding below to switch the lens.
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Enter any public company ticker. We pull the trailing 12-month financials and project the SBC savings, dilution reduction, and shareholder value created across three years from switching to Carver Edison's Cashless Participation® program.
Patterns Worth Noting
0 of 0
Companies where the most recent fiscal year's stock-based comp exceeded full-year net income, including 452 companies that did not turn a profit, where any positive SBC automatically clears a negative earnings line. Of the 584 total, 132 were profitable companies where SBC genuinely topped earnings.
0
of all $386.7B sits in just 25 names. The other 1,563 companies combined contribute the remaining 60%.
+0
YoY comparison includes only companies public for both fiscal years, excluding 38 companies in total: 25 first-public-year companies whose prior year is pre-IPO, plus 13 lacking a comparable prior-year figure (1,550 of 1,588), representing $378.0B of the $386.7B total.
$0B
Per day, every day
$44.1M per hour, $12,263 per second. Recognized as a GAAP expense across US public markets.
$118B
213 companies, 30% of all SBC. The single most concentrated sector by both dollars and intensity.
0 cos · 0
recognize $1B or more in SBC each. Together they account for more than half the entire report's total.
0
companies recognized more SBC than they generated in operating cash flow. The non-cash add-back matters.
0
companies where annual SBC exceeded total revenue. Many are recent IPOs absorbing first-year grant amortization.
$0
is the median company's annual SBC across the dataset. Distribution is heavily skewed by the mega-cap tier.
Where equity comp eats the most revenue. Among companies with $100M+ in revenue.
The non-cash line behind free cash flow. Among companies with $100M+ in operating cash flow.
Biggest annual changes.
Dollar deltas reflect year-over-year change in reported SBC. Large single-year jumps may include one-time equity acceleration from acquisitions recognized under ASC 805 purchase accounting rather than ongoing grant activity.
What This Means For Your Plan
Cashless Participation® is designed to reduce stock-based comp expense by up to 85% without changing what your employees receive.
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30 minutes with our team. We'll project your actual SBC, EPS, and dilution profile with Cashless Participation® layered on top of your existing equity programs.
Methodology
Every figure is pulled directly from primary filings on SEC EDGAR, not from third-party aggregators or estimates.
Sources: data.sec.gov XBRL company-concept API + frames API + submissions API, with document-level inline-XBRL parsed directly for filers the API does not surface. Spot-checked against the rendered annual-report HTML on www.sec.gov. Verification logs available on request.
us-gaap SBC frames for calendar years 2024 and 2025 plus a full sweep of 20-F and 40-F foreign-filer annual reports. Listing status is taken from the SEC's ticker-exchange registry as of June 12, 2026; companies not currently listed there (delisted, acquired or deregistered) are excluded, with Form 25 delisting filings checked for the tickered and borderline cases. Issuers appearing under two CIKs (a listed parent plus its own SEC-filing financing subsidiary, partnership twin or predecessor shell) are counted once. 1,588 companies are included.us-gaap:ShareBasedCompensation (the cash-flow add-back), with fallbacks to us-gaap:AllocatedShareBasedCompensationExpense, the additional-paid-in-capital credit for compensation recognized over the requisite service period, and the recognized compensation-cost tag, in that order; full-scope concepts only, never plan-specific partial tags. IFRS foreign private issuers are measured from the analogous ifrs-full share-based payment tags (AdjustmentsForSharebasedPayments first, then the total-expense and employee-expense tags, then the sum of equity-settled and cash-settled components). IFRS 2 and ASC 718 measure share-based compensation on closely similar but not identical bases. For a small set of large filers whose SBC facts exist only inside the filing document (company-extension tags or dimensionally-qualified facts that the SEC's concept API does not surface), figures are extracted directly from the annual report's inline-XBRL layer under documented per-company scope mappings, cross-validated against component totals; each such row cites its tag and accession like every other row. Companies with no machine-readable consolidated SBC fact in any layer (the figure appears only as narrative note text or in combined buckets that cannot be split) cannot be included.Revenues (Revenue under IFRS), NetCashProvidedByUsedInOperatingActivities (CashFlowsFromUsedInOperatingActivities), NetIncomeLoss with ProfitLoss fallback (ProfitLossAttributableToOwnersOfParent under IFRS), and weighted-average diluted shares. Every metric in a row is anchored to the same fiscal period as that company's SBC figure; where a tag does not cover that period the cell is left blank rather than filled from a different year. For banks, REITs and insurers whose contract-revenue tag captures only a sliver of true revenue (interest, lease and premium income sit outside it), the umbrella Revenues total is used when materially larger; where no usable total is tagged, revenue is left blank.