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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rkral who wrote (63644)	4/20/2003 12:49:26 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77400

All the numbers since 1999 are significantly larger than the totals for 98/99. I see nothing to support your statement that "most of [rkral edit: the option exercise] benefit happened long ago, 98/99 timeframe". Was that a WAG? Oh yeah, definitely a WAG. Based on 2 things - Cisco stock higher then than now, and Cisco employee pool significantly lower now than then. I don't want to dig up all this financial data on Cisco, I did it about 6 mos ago... right now I want to focus on the internet companies (those stocks are going up). Its such a tough call because of course you have these long term 10 year options out there and those are worth something, but the recent grants are worthless. My impression was that Cisco had a hiring frenzy in 98/99. I'd love to know the specifics of how many employees on record from the past 10 years from their filings if anybody has time to look that up. You might have a situation at Cisco similar to the Oracle situation where a bunch of really early-on guys are forced to exercise or lose options now, and that might add to the numbers, but for the rank and file at Cisco I believe most options are underwater at this point. That new grant is probably a replacement for all these worthless options the engineers have, imo. BTW, I'm not debating the tax issue. It seems like Cisco and companies that use options should have to pay taxes on them. Another WAG, btw I am not up on tax treatment- I don't fault SV companies for taking all the tax loopholes they can but this one seems like it needs to be closed imo. We have a huge deficit after all.