Star Entertainment’s Executive Performance Rights Lapse for Seventh Year Running
Australian casino operator fails key metrics once again, cancelling long-term incentives for senior executives
Australia’s casino operator, Star Entertainment Group, has announced that long-term performance rights awarded to executives and senior managers have lapsed for the seventh successive year after the company failed to meet all three required performance hurdles for the financial year ending June 2022. According to the announcement, the metrics involved earnings per share, relative total shareholder return and return on invested capital — each accounting for a third of the award and each unmet.
Under the terms of Star’s long-term incentive plan, the relative total shareholder return (TSR) must place the company at or above the 50th percentile of its peer group for vesting to occur — a threshold it has not cleared since 2019. Over the same period the company’s total annualised return in Australian-dollar terms has fallen 37.7 percent since the start of fiscal 2019, compared with growth of 8.8 percent in the broader ASX 200 benchmark index.
Star’s earnings per share have moved from a positive 32 Australian cents in 2017 to a loss of A$2.117 in 2023, narrowing to a loss of 14.9 Australian cents in 2025. The company has struggled with a combination of pandemic disruption, regulatory reforms and anti-money-laundering scrutiny, which have weighed heavily on operations and liquidity.
The payout design was amended for the fiscal year 2025 award to allocate 100 percent of the performance rights to relative TSR following a review, but even under that design the firm remains well below the vesting threshold.
On the Australian Securities Exchange the shares were trading at 8.3 Australian cents each at the time of the announcement, after having risen briefly to 8.5 cents.
The repeated lapse of executive incentives underscores the depth of the challenge facing Star as it seeks to restore profitability, regain investor confidence and comply with increasingly strict regulatory requirements in the Australian casino industry.
With the seven-year streak of non-vesting now firmly established, stakeholders will be closely watching the company’s next steps to regain momentum and deliver against performance metrics in a highly competitive and regulated environment.
Under the terms of Star’s long-term incentive plan, the relative total shareholder return (TSR) must place the company at or above the 50th percentile of its peer group for vesting to occur — a threshold it has not cleared since 2019. Over the same period the company’s total annualised return in Australian-dollar terms has fallen 37.7 percent since the start of fiscal 2019, compared with growth of 8.8 percent in the broader ASX 200 benchmark index.
Star’s earnings per share have moved from a positive 32 Australian cents in 2017 to a loss of A$2.117 in 2023, narrowing to a loss of 14.9 Australian cents in 2025. The company has struggled with a combination of pandemic disruption, regulatory reforms and anti-money-laundering scrutiny, which have weighed heavily on operations and liquidity.
The payout design was amended for the fiscal year 2025 award to allocate 100 percent of the performance rights to relative TSR following a review, but even under that design the firm remains well below the vesting threshold.
On the Australian Securities Exchange the shares were trading at 8.3 Australian cents each at the time of the announcement, after having risen briefly to 8.5 cents.
The repeated lapse of executive incentives underscores the depth of the challenge facing Star as it seeks to restore profitability, regain investor confidence and comply with increasingly strict regulatory requirements in the Australian casino industry.
With the seven-year streak of non-vesting now firmly established, stakeholders will be closely watching the company’s next steps to regain momentum and deliver against performance metrics in a highly competitive and regulated environment.
AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
