Company: WHWK
Filing Date: 2025-01-21
Form Type: PREM14A
Source: 0001193125-25-009599
Chunk: 198

Company: Whitehawk Therapeutics, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-01-21
Form: PREM14A
Chunk 198
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 a practice that we plan to continue. In addition, equity awards granted to employees under the Amended and Restated Plan

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will provide our eligible employees with an opportunity to acquire or increase their ownership stake in the Company, and we believe this aligns their interests with those of our stockholders, creating strong incentives for our employees to work hard for our future growth and success. We firmly believe that a broad-based equity program is a necessary and powerful employee incentive and retention tool that benefits all of our stockholders. Equity ownership programs put employees’ interests directly into alignment with those of other stockholders, as they reward employees based upon stock price performance. Without the ability to grant market-based equity incentives to our employees, we believe we would be at a disadvantage against other companies with whom we compete for talent to provide the total compensation packages necessary to attract, retain and motivate the employee talent critical to our future success. Without equity incentives, we would be forced to consider cash replacement alternatives to provide a market-competitive total compensation package necessary to attract, retain and motivate the employee talent critical to our future growth and success. These cash replacement alternatives could, among other things, reduce the cash available for investment in growth and development of new business and research, cause a loss of motivation by employees to achieve superior performance over the longer term, and reduce the incentive of employees to remain employed with us during the equity award vesting period. Our current practice is to provide equity awards to selected key employees that includes certain new hires, members of the management team, senior executive team members, non-employee directors, and other key contributors. We believe that equity compensation is an important component of our long-term employee incentive and retention plan and has been very effective in enabling us to attract and retain the talent critical for our business. Our practice is to primarily grant only stock options and restricted stock units (“RSUs”). If the Company’s stockholders do not approve the Equity Plan Increase, then the current share limit will continue in effect, and we will continue to make awards, subject to such share limit. However, the Company’s plans to operate its business could be adversely affected as reduced equity awards could increase employee turnover, make it more difficult to motivate and retain existing employees, make us less competitive in hiring new talent into the Company to grow our business. Additionally, as a consequence, we may need to increase the cash-based compensation incentives in hiring and retaining top talent, which could adversely impact our financial results of operations, cash flows and balance sheet. Design of Our Amended and