CEO Pay Watch

Sally Smith | Buffalo Wild Wings Inc., president and CEO

Total compensation: $10,416,256

for the year ended Dec. 31, 2015

Salary: $841,346

Nonequity incentive pay: $726,180

Other compensation: $171,766

Exercised stock options: $1,613,034

Sally Smith, president and CEO of Golden Valley-based Buffalo Wild Wings.

Value realized on vesting shares: $7,063,930

New stock options: 9,234

Total 2015 shareholder return: -11.5 percent

Note: Smith got a 16.7 percent increase to her base salary in March 2015. It was a merit increase for Smith's long service as CEO of the Golden Valley-based casual restaurant chain. It also brought her salary closer to the market median for the company's peers in food service.

While her salary increased, her annual incentive bonus went down 39 percent because the company missed targets for revenue, earnings and new store openings last year.

Smith's overall compensation more than doubled from the $4.9 million she took home in 2014.

Most of that increase was from $5 million worth of performance-based restricted stock awards, which were granted in April 2013 and were for the three-year performance period covering fiscal 2013 to 2015. While profit grew more slowly in 2015, the company's cumulative profit over the three-year period was $260.7 million, well ahead of the target of $241.4 million.

According to the proxy, "As a result of the strong growth in net income over this period, especially in fiscal 2013 and 2014, a payout of 100 percent of the share units granted was earned for these performance-based restricted stock units."

Smith realized another $2 million from time-based restricted stock awards originally granted in March of 2012 that vested in March of 2015.

Patrick Kennedy