All hail the RSU printing press.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/business/stock-buybacks-that-hurt-shareholders.html?ref=business
3 replies (most recent on top)
$13.6 billion in buybacks over 5 years. Let's make some assumptions:
-
The price of the stock did not change over 5 years (actually a fairly good assumption http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=QCOM+Interactive#)"range":"5y") ).
-
The number of employees has averaged about 23,000 over the 5 years. Fortune mentions about 15000 employees in 2010, and Yahoo finance mentions about 31,300 now.
-
Qualcomm didn't do any new public offerings of stock over this time.
-
The article mentions of 2% rise in shares outstanding. Let's just assume, for this calculation, that the change was 0%.
Divide $13.6 billion by 23,000 and you get...$591,304. That's the amount of stock grants each and every employee should have gotten. That's an extra $118,260 each and every year in stock grants.
Of course, I didn't actually get $591,304 in stock grants, because the morons on the board are hoarding most of it.
And then last week, they sent out an email asking us to do the dirty work in keeping their royalty/patent system intact: https://www.thelayoff.com/qualcomm/post/4871497436889088 Tell me WHY the hell I should care about this? I mean, if I had $600k in QCOM equity, I might care. But with the amount they've given me, I really don't give a damn and neither should most of you. I figure, if my representative votes against the Patent or Innovation Act, it might make it more difficult for me to start my own company in the future, because sleazebag patent troll lawyers at companies like the Q will be able to sue it out of existence. So, I am going to the EFF website and telling my rep to vote FOR the legislation.
House Of Cards...
"You might think a buyback program of that size would have diminished the total share count. In fact, Qualcomm’s average diluted share count has actually increased over the period by almost 41 million shares. That’s a 2 percent rise since 2010.
How is this possible? Mainly it’s because the company has been granting a treasure trove of stock and option awards to its executives and other employees over the last five years"