Palo Alto Networks Inc (PANW) reported total compensation of $99.74 million for Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Nikesh Arora in fiscal year 2025. That figure is the Summary Compensation Table total from the company's latest filed proxy statement, which gathers salary, bonus, stock and option awards and all other compensation into a single line.
Against that, the open-market record is narrower. Form 4 filings show 2 open-market purchases totalling $9,999,705, with the most recent transaction dated October 9th, 2026. Those are code P purchases, meaning shares bought with the buyer's own money rather than shares received as compensation.
The composition matters. Base salary for the period was $1,000,000, which means the overwhelming majority of the reported total sits in equity awards and other elements rather than cash wages. Award values in the proxy are grant date accounting figures, and what an executive eventually realises from them depends on vesting schedules and the share price at the time, not on the number printed in the table.
Arora has held the top job at Palo Alto Networks since June 6th, 2018. That is a long tenure by large-cap technology standards, and it gives the share price record a meaningful sample. Since he started, the stock has returned 1,077.9%. The company now carries a market capitalisation of about $325.97 billion, which places it among the larger names in Technology Services.
For readers tracking insider activity, the useful comparison is directional rather than arithmetic. Compensation arrives on a schedule set by the board and the compensation committee. Open-market buying arrives when the insider decides to write a cheque, inside the windows the company's trading policy allows. The first tells you what the company decided an executive was worth for a year of work. The second tells you what the executive was willing to pay for additional exposure to the shares.
There is plenty this does not show. A large compensation total is not a verdict on performance, good or bad, and it is not evidence of anything improper. Much of it is unvested paper that may be worth more or less than the reported value. Equally, an award is not a purchase. Shares that land in an executive's account through a vesting event or an option exercise are not open-market buying, and we do not count them as such. Nor do the filings explain motive: a Form 4 records what was bought, when, and at what price, and nothing beyond that. Purchases can be made for diversification reasons, to satisfy stock ownership guidelines, or under a pre-arranged plan, and the form itself will not tell you which.
Sources: the company's latest filed proxy statement and SEC Form 4 filings via EDGAR, reviewed by InsiderBuying.com.
See the full record for Palo Alto Networks Inc (PANW) → insiderbuying.com/companies/PANW