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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (177348)	4/2/2004 12:28:32 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

fat lady singing- this is a hilarious article on options, at the end it lays out Barrett's excuses for why options shouldn't be expensed: evil trial lawyers and the chinese communists. Coalition of the Greedy Three cheers of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which recently released its proposal to require companies to expense stock options, and three jeers for the companies -- I call them the Coalition of the Greedy -- that continue to fight this common-sense change. Last year, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) gave its employees 110 million stock options, worth $991 million (after taxes), yet this enormous and very real (though not cash) expense does not appear as a compensation expense in Intel's financial statements. Instead, it's buried deep in the footnotes of the 10-K. Were it to appear on the income statement, reported net income last year would have been 16% lower and the stock's trailing P/E ratio today would be 38.6 rather than 32.2. Craig Barrett, Intel's CEO, in addition to his salary of $610,000 and a bonus of $1.5 million, received 1.35 million options in 2003 (131% more than the previous year), worth an estimated $14.4 million. Knowing all of this, I'll give you three guesses where Mr. Barrett comes down on the issue of expensing stock options. I'm sure you're be shocked -- SHOCKED! -- to hear that he wants to maintain the fiction that options have no cost. As long as this remains the case, boards of directors are likely to continue doling them out to CEOs by the bushel. In addition, by reducing reported compensation expenses due to paying employees with options, companies inflate their earnings, free cash flow, return on equity, and so forth, which inflates their stock price and -- voila! -- CEOs can cash in their bushels of options at even higher prices. What a win-win (for them, anyway)! Mr. Barrett and, sadly, many other similarly situated CEOs have banded together to fiercely defend the stock option gravy train because, in my opinion, they're just plain old selfish. That's why I've nicknamed them the Coalition of the Greedy. Barrett's options package isn't even that egregious relative to the option pigs in Silicon Valley: Cisco's (Nasdaq: CSCO) John Chambers, Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) Steve Jobs, and Juniper's (Nasdaq: JNPR) Scott Kriens. fool.com

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (177348)	4/14/2004 4:15:59 AM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

RE: "That leaves only the executives crying for their own benefit. " No, but it shows executive are out of touch with the public. It doesn't show that the executives are wrong. They are crying to do what is right for the industry, but would certainly agree with you they don't realize you cannot ask the public for something, when in the same breath, you gain from that request. Of course it might make the public wonder about the intentions. The general public doesn't know the issues or spend their life motivating employees or retaining talent so it's not going to resonate. You're a contractor. Contractors don't get options. I am a founder that hands out options to motivate employees. I want to see employees motivated so my stock goes up. The true issue in the industry, as I see it is: a) how stock got handed out b) handing them out while investors are in pain c) asking the USA to not expense options, while not making a visible personal sacrifice in order for people to really trust the sincerity of the request, to trust the bigger picture here that's at risk. Compare how our executives handled trying to convince the world not to expense options, to how I recently lobbied within a company for some people to get a bonus. Felt so strongly about them getting this bonus that I made darn sure I was not included in this so my request could be respected for its purity of intentions, so no one could possibly misjudge this as a self-serving request, but a critical thing the company needed to do. If they aren't rewarded, my stock isn't going to have any value. A request may not be fully understood, but if it comes with a self-sacrifice, then people tend to trust the request for its purity of intentions. Rather than debating my above post, let's acknowledge we both agree on the problem, which I think you said was, execs got overpaid with options. And I agree with this, but would also add, when the stock was nose diving. One thing I've always been meaning to ask you is: do you think there are other ways to control quantity of options? Is there a better solution? Rather than taking the first solution that drives up, what other procedures could be put in place to control quantity? One idea I had for our startup, was to put a junior employee on the comp committee. Do you think two tieredness can happen when all perspectives are at the same table, with equal wait? If you were on a board, with the complete ability to influence it, what would you do? Regards, Amy J