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Technology Stocks : Siebel Systems (SEBL) - strong buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Howe who wrote (5920)	6/7/2002 2:30:21 PM
From: Hardly B. Solipsist	Respond to of 6974

I agree with you about the stock owned by founders. Whether or not they are selling and how much may give some insight into their views about the future, but there is no dilution there. However, I was under the impression that the discussion was about options that Tom had, not founder's shares. In the case of ORCL, Ellison exercised and sold a boatload of options within the last couple of years (ORCL gives 10 year options, and these were getting close to expiring), and I can imagine that Tom is getting options, too. I agree that giving options to employees is an expense, I just think that it's a lot more complicated than any of the proposals I've seen for accounting for it. I also think that companies often give far too many options to senior management and not enough to lower-level employees. But I also think that there is a big difference between the best CEO's and the rest, and as a stockholder I'm sometimes willing to pay a lot to keep the best people...

To: David Howe who wrote (5920)	6/7/2002 3:49:03 PM
From: hueyone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6974

This is not a real expense and should have no bearing on the value of a company going forward. Where do you think this money comes from? It is we shareholders paying Tom Siebel money to run the company and it is clearly an expense. If SEBL paid for their supplies, rent, insurance, repair and all their other expenses with stock options, would you then argue that SEBL is the first billion dollar plus revenue company with zero expenses? I don't think you would. Well, there is no difference in paying employees with stock options than paying any of these other expenses with stock options. The company is giving up something of value when it hands out employee stock options, and Black Scholes, is one of several ways to calculate this value. Another way is to simply subract the strike price from the market price at time of exercise. But counting the value as zero, as is the practise now, is so far off from any representative truth, it is ridiculous. Best, Huey