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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Burt Masnick who wrote (72839)	9/23/1999 3:11:00 PM
From: kash johal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571808

Burt, Re: "options and stock buybacks" I am a great believer in options. Most public companies hedge the options they give out by purchasing calls on their common stock. And this is a very prudent thing for a company to do. The use of stock buybacks is a different issue however. Intel buys back almost as much stock/qtr as its quarterly profits. This is an artifial boost to the stock IMHO. At some point if the stock dumps big time it'll be doubly painfull. regards, Kash

To: Burt Masnick who wrote (72839)	9/23/1999 3:28:00 PM
From: Ali Chen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571808

Burt, <Ali - Thanks for the URLs.> Any time. <It's an accounting issue and it leads to a modest overstatement of earnings for most of the companies mentioned.> Yeah, I see:) For 1996, intel faithfully "reported" $5B in "profits" while when adjusted for the cost of stock options it was a loss of $281M. Just a little overstatement, even Forbes has difficulty in presenting it's value in percentage. Microsoft really shines, I agree. <..the article is a little disingenuous in that the tables assume what would happen if everything were made "current" in a single year when one factor is that the issue is spread over several years.> Where did you find that the spread was not accounted? What I read is: "Eleven companies of the 100 would have shown a loss in 1996 had they run the cost of options through the income statement" So I dont think they overlooked such obvious factors as you mentioned. <In my view, it's somewhat like arguing about religions - sometimes interesting but seldom useful.> I perfectly understand your position. It must be real fun to watch suckers paying all your bills in hope that they are buying the same lucky tickets as you bought 20 years ago. Do you believe this option misreporting scam will continue forever? I don't think so.