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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (148901)	12/9/1999 6:38:00 PM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 176387

Chuzz - re: repricing - after CPQ took a hit in 1991, the board was under pressure to reprice as the stock had dropped to less than half of its 1990 level - a lot like what was going on now. The BOD responded by creating bylaws which prohibit the repricing of options once granted. DELL has recently used relatively large option grants as an incentive to get mid-level CPQ managers to move. CPQ apparently did not do option grants to anyone below relatively senior managers. A front-line manager at CPQ who had never gotten an option in his career at CPQ was offered 5000 shares of DELL and a 15% salary boost to change jobs. A front line technician with only 2 years experience was given a 10% salary increase and 1000 shares of DELL to change jobs. Both of those guys are dads in my son's cub scout troop and both will now be leaving to go to Austin. The scout troop is a relatively small sample - if this is indicative of DELL's current hiring practice, there might be a lot of options out there. Clearly this is a direct substitute for salary and bonus. As to Drew's comment about "they earned it" - I know that is the standard line but this is hundreds of millions a year not counting founders like MSD. That money translated to earnings would have given 5 or 6 cents EPS each quarter, and perhaps we as shareholders would have seen a little better appreciation on our investment. Unfortunately I didn't get my shares at 80 cents...

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (148901)	12/9/1999 8:16:00 PM
From: jim kelley	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

CTC, That is an interesting observation re., the tax implications of expensing compensation versus using stock options. It would be interesting to compute the cash versus options tradeoffs taking into account the sale of European puts. JK