Company: AAOI
Filing Date: 2025-03-10
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001104659-25-022149
Chunk: 54

Company: APPLIED OPTOELECTRONICS, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-03-10
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 54
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 314 to 1. We selected December 31, 2024, which is the last day of the Company’s 2024 fiscal year, as the date we would use to identify our median employee. To find the median employee of all our employees (excluding our CEO), we used the employee’s compensation from our payroll records; compensation includes base salary, bonus and RSU grants. In making our determination, we did not annualize the base compensation for those employees who did not work for the Company for the entire fiscal year and did not annualize the base compensation of seasonal or temporary employees. We also did not make any cost-of-living adjustments in identifying the median employee. We used the December 31, 2024 exchange rates of 7.30 RMB to 1 USD and 32.80 NTD to 1 USD for our calculations. In evaluating our CEO pay-ratio for 2024, we believe stockholders should take into account that approximately 82.5% of our employees as of December 31, 2024 were employed by us in our facilities in China and Taiwan (including the median employee whose compensation was used to calculate the CEO pay-ratio as described above). If we included only our employees based in the U.S. in this analysis, we estimate the total compensation for the median employee of all our U.S. employees for 2024 would be $47,529 and the ratio of our CEO’s total compensation for 2024 to the total compensation for the median employee of all our U.S. employees (excluding our CEO) for 2024 would be 78 to 1. This pay ratio is an estimate calculated in a manner consistent with SEC rules based on the methodology described above. The SEC rules for identifying the median compensated employee and calculating the pay ratio based on that employee’s annual total compensation allow companies to adopt a variety of methodologies, to apply certain exclusions, and to make reasonable estimates and assumptions. As such, the pay ratio reported by other companies may not be comparable to the pay ratio reported above, as other companies may have different employment and compensation practices and may utilize different methodologies, exclusions, estimates and assumptions in calculating their own pay ratios. Pay vs. Performance In accordance with rules adopted by the SEC pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Act, we provide the following disclosure regarding executive compensation for our principal executive officer (“PEO”) and Non-PEO NEOs and Company performance for the fiscal years listed below. The compensation committee did not consider the pay versus