Restricted Stock Unit (RSU)

A restricted stock unit is a promise to deliver company shares once a vesting condition is satisfied — most commonly continued employment through a stated schedule, such as ratably over three or four years. Unlike a stock option, an RSU carries value even if the stock price is flat or falling, since the recipient is not required to pay an exercise price to receive the shares.

RSUs are the more common "time-based" counterpart to a performance stock unit: where a PSU’s payout depends on hitting performance goals, a standard RSU’s vesting depends only on the passage of time and the executive remaining employed.

The grant-date fair value reported for an RSU is simply the number of units granted multiplied by the stock price on the grant date — there is no performance-probability modeling involved, which is one reason RSU grant values are more directly comparable across companies than PSU grant values are.

Marvell granted Chris Koopmans 16,402 restricted stock units on April 15, 2022, with a grant-date fair value of $998,734 — no performance condition attached, unlike a PSU.