Ron, "then maybe .. just maybe .. you will have earned the right to say"
No need to be that patronizing, sir. First, I have a right
to say whatever I want. Second, it is maybe you
who need to begin to understand that the exact expense
for compensating employees with options is well known
to the company, to the last centimo. But you never raised
the question why the company carefully hides this number,
behind variety of vague averages. Then you might want to
think why the company has spent half of its whole operating
income to buy its own papers, $30B out of $60B, for the
same 8-year period under your example. The $30B is a good
real chunk of money. Somebody has pocketed those $30B dollars.
I agree, not all of this money went to option exercisees.
However, since the number of outstanding shares stays
surpisingly about the same over the years, you may want
to begin to understand that there are other sources of
dilution, shares conversion upon various acquisitions,
who knows what else. You probably want to understand
that if some shares are converted, it is also some sort
of give-away process, to compensate somebody for something.
The important thingy is that the net result is in spending
50% of the operating income for something as clear as mud,
and you as a shareholder may want to think about this.
I am not a shareholder, and I am just entertaining myself
here. But I have some suspicion that "investing" in yourself
is not an economically-sound idea, and looks more like
a scam scheme and another part of creative "financial
engineering" that needs to be understood.
- Ali |
