On CACI’s very odd vacation policy

Labor Day traditionally marks the end of summer and at least based on the out-of-office responses that I’ve received, quite a few people spent the past few weeks on vacation. I thought about that as I was flipping through CACI International’s proxy that was filed after 4 pm on the Friday before Labor Day.

In a footnote to a footnote in the summary compensation table, the large government contractor explained that named executives are able to sell back unused vacation time to the company, which struck me as pretty unusual. According to the footnote, CEO John Mengucci received $170.2K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2026 by selling back his vacation time. Three other executives also sold back vacation time, though not nearly as much as Mengucci did.

As I began to dig deeper, I realized that this was not a new policy and appears to have been in place for various CACI executives dating back to 2015, which precedes Mengucci’s tenure as CEO. Still, it is a new disclosure for me and one that is very uncommon, not just among peer companies, but companies in general based on several searches that I ran with DoTadda. From time to time, companies like Costco, have paid out for vacation time on a one-off basis. But CACI has been doing this consistently for the past 11 years.

A quick review of the 2025 proxy shows that the amount of money that Mengucci received grew dramatically over the past year. In 2025, the vacation time payout was just shy of $120K, meaning that the 2026 number disclosed on Friday was over 40% higher.

No doubt the past few months — certainly since the Iran War began in late February — have been busy for government contractors like CACI, especially those focused on defense, so perhaps the executive was too busy to take vacation time. Although the stock had been falling since mid-January, it picked up sharply after the company reported fourth quarter earnings on Aug. 5.

The $170K represents around 12% of Mengucci’s total salary or around 6 1/2 weeks of unused vacation time. His employment agreement doesn’t spell out how much vacation time he’s entitled to. At many companies, four weeks of vacation is fairly standard for CEOs.

CACI doesn’t provide much detail on this policy, so it’s hard to know what prompted this change 11 years ago. But it’s certainly interesting that the CEO, who sets the tone at the company, has pretty consistently chosen to cash out his vacation time, rather than taking some time off.