Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: hueyone who wrote (63650)	4/20/2003 2:05:41 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Respond to of 77400

Your position changed when you realized expensing options at date of exercise would portray Cisco in an unfavorable light No it didn't. I have heard that tired expression (cisco/amzn/yhoo/ebay - fill in the tech company - effectively has had ZERO EARNINGS since inception) due to stock option expensing... for years- the bears on the bear threads have been trying to get options expensing to take hold since, like 94 I think - black scholes is a fairly recent development at least for me... stock option expensing is not. Great companies like Intel successfully used options for years at tolerable grant rates would not have impacted earnings in a material way had those options been expensed. They had small engineering orgs relative to what we have today. I've told you this, many times. When Sun started up, they had Bill Joy and a few other guys and that was IT. The problem with the internet is that the stakes are high, you have to bang a product out in a year that is 10x the complexity of what we had in 82. Maybe the options race contributed to the schedules we have now, I don't know- but for whatever reason it is too late. If you want to develop a software product for the internet you can either pay a ton of people 150-250K per year or incent them with options. You don't have the luxury of starting out with 5 guys and selling your products to the geek market for 5 years while you "tune it" like Sun did. Just the way it is, for better or worse.