Company: AX
Filing Date: 2025-09-25
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001299709-25-000174
Chunk: 60

Company: Axos Financial, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-09-25
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 60
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 that of our stockholders.

• We outperform our peers in terms of total compensation expense ratio. Our Bank’s salaries and benefits, including equity compensation, were 0.91% of average assets compared to a peer ratio of 1.34% for banks with greater than $1 billion in assets.

• Assuming the same amount of assets, peer banks are spending approximately $103 million more than us per year on compensation.

• Approximately 82% of our U.S.-based employees own Axos’s stock, which we believe is greater ownership than our peers.

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#### Burn rate and potential dilution.
– The Company has been prudent in the use of equity awards. The 3-year gross and net burn rate (excluding shares withheld for tax purposes) have been 1.55% and 1.01%, respectively. By comparison, the gross burn rate for two relevant ISS benchmarks is 1.05% (banks) and 3.68% (financial services).

– We have returned value to our stockholders through our share repurchase program that has more than offset dilution from this proposed share increase. During fiscal years 2025 and 2024 the Company repurchased 1.0 million shares and 2.5 million shares, respectively, and we have $148.1 million of remaining share repurchase authorization.

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#### Stockholder-friendly plan provisions.
– The 2014 Plan contains many provisions that safeguard stockholders’ interests:

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#### No evergreen or re-pricing revisions.
• No tax gross-ups; no dividends on unvested awards.

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#### Double-trigger upon change-in-control.
• Minimum stock ownership requirements: 8x salary for the CEO, 5x salary for the CFO and 3x salary for all other EVPs. The ownership requirement for the directors is 5x their annual cash retainer.

We believe our program appropriately incentivizes and rewards our employees and has been effective in aligning our employees’ interest with those of other stockholders as evidenced by the Company’s strong financial and stock performance.

Why the Amendment is Important for Our Future Success

Achieving superior long-term results for our stockholders has always been one of our primary objectives and, therefore, it is essential that employees think and act like owners of the Company. Stock ownership helps enhance the alignment of the long-term economic interests of our employees with those of our stockholders. Accordingly, we have historically granted equity compensation awards to encourage alignment of the interests of substantially all