Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy?

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To: Spartex who wrote (28032)	9/8/1999 4:08:00 PM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (1) of 42771

500 Million to offset exercised options Sounds like real money being given away to management to me. "On July 26, 1999, Novell's Board of Directors authorized up to $500 million for a share repurchase program through October 31, 2000, with the intent of offsetting the impact of exercised stock options." That is an awful lot of options! ============= Various people have emailed me to say that Novell does indeed withhold funds for Federal Taxes upon the exercise of the options and the sale of the stock. Those wishing to keep some of the stock sell enough to meet their taxes and hold the rest. Of course senior management probably have even more in the way of options coming in the pipe. They probably sell it all. This brings us back to the heavy insider selling of Slitz, Stone, Nelson, and others. First we have to be sure that these sales were made because the options were expiring and/or the person was planning to leave the company and had to sell them in a timely fashion. Second we would have to look at how many options they still held and what the % of the total the sale represented. The fact that nobody buys in the open market and no one bought even when the stock was under $10 says the company is exceedingly generous to its senior management with stock options. As stockholders we can expect therefore some real tie to performance and execution, especially from those in marketing. (In my opinion you cannot fault the speed with which the developers have produced product.) Why should these marketing executives be getting such tremendous stock options bonuses when Novell is consistently grilled in the press and the industry for having weak marketing? Shouldn't their bonuses be tied to their performance? Show me a marketing program for a Novell product that was worth these kind of bonuses. The only one I can recall off hand is the appliance remolding of Bordermanager and no one in the press appears to have fished out that story from the inside. Hopefully they will when we see the revenue stream!!! In the meantime why is the BOD rewarding mediocre marketing performance with the stockholders gold? Between Slitz and Nelson you are looking at a fairly high percentage of Novell's quarterly profits!!! Being paid out for what exactly?

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