A smattering of opinions on technology, books, business, and culture. Now in its 4th technology iteration.
31 October 2002
Expensing Options. Reading SNS this week, it just struck me that, rather than trying to assign some debateable value number to options and passing them thru the P&L, let’s do a simpler thing. Let’s just have companies publish quarterly a statement of ownership – who owns what shares; how many new options were granted in the quarter; how many grants expired or were cancelled; new stock issuances as a result of financing moves, etc. And then a clear state of EPS impacts of all this – I just want to know, as a stockholder, did I suffer unfair and unwise dilution during the quarter? This is something that companies could do today without solving the problem of how to value options. And it would be valuable.