Thanks John, (and I thought I was detail-orineted :)).
Your statement below,
[for all beneficial owners] Includes 989,323 shares issuable upon the exercise of
stock options exercisable within 60 days of March 1, 1998, 836,323 of which are
subject to repurchase by the Company at the original exercise price in the event
of termination of employment or services, which right lapses over time in
accordance with vesting schedules.
struck me as interesting. Two months past March 1, is May 1. Which
means this additional float could have been dumped into the market
any time after that. As you mention, these officers must be crazy
(my paraphrase :)) if they haven't sold those shares by now. There
were plenty of 144 filings in April, May, and June from the officers,
but I haven't tried to match them up to the options mentioned in
the pre-14a filing footnotes. My point, is this may be old news.
I completely agree with your point that the shareholders are currently
footing the bill for exec. compensation and everything else. That's
one of things that makes Amazon such a unique stock situation. The
general perception is that Amazon is a well-run, fast-growing
operation, with a lead on the competition. Many people, when they
hear that sort of good news, just assume that Amazon must be
profitable -- not so. Worse than not profitable, Amazon has debt
up to its eyeballs. I do think that the combination of debt and
equity financing will likely keep Amazon for some time to come,
but it just doesn't lead to a good return on shareholder investment.
Off-topic: they're saying that 13 employees at a machine
shop in IL have won the Powerball. Bad news for the shop owner,
unless he was also in the pool. Pretty soon, employers will have
to buy "Power Ball insurance", to protect their business from these
sorts of "catastrophes". :) |
