CEO total compensation of $673,332 is modest for a public company — even accounting for the company's small current market cap — and is well within reasonable benchmarks for a CEO at a sub-$200M market cap company in the research/information services sector; his base salary was only $472,500 for the year because it was reinstated from $1 (a symbolic reduction he had accepted) partway through 2025. For the other named executives, the cash incentive plan paid out only 2% of target because the company missed its financial goals, and the committee added a discretionary bonus of 25% of target to recognize cost-management efforts during a difficult year — a transparent and proportionate response. The equity awards for non-CEO executives include meaningful performance conditions tied to 2027 contract value and profit margin targets, and stock options are underwater at current prices, meaning executives will only benefit if the stock recovers. The pay program is structured appropriately with variable pay comprising roughly 67% of total target compensation for non-CEO executives, and the prior year say-on-pay vote received 99% support with no governance concerns identified.

Non-audit fees (tax fees of $21,944 plus other fees of $2,125, totaling $24,069) represent approximately 1.2% of audit fees of $2,055,100, which is well below the 50% threshold that would raise independence concerns. PwC is a Big 4 firm appropriate for a public company. Auditor tenure is not disclosed in the proxy, so the tenure trigger cannot fire; the absence of tenure disclosure is noted as a minor negative factor but does not change the vote.