ABP, we paid a certain amount for the acquisition of those companies. However, there must have been discussions as to compensation for the key guys, whoever and however many there may be. Let's say a key individual deserves and can get $300K/year, but let's say that individual can be happy with $175K/year and X number of options.

Although I view this option issue as significant, in my mind the drama that it has engendered is disproportionate. I think our guys have been working very hard and they've earned my trust (I'm talking trust of management of a public company, not trust of a brother or best friend).

On the one hand, the vast majority here believe that they have found the mother lode in POET, yet this move throws most for quite a loop. I suggest it is the frustration of the many years that is strongly accenting the views of some. Or, perhaps to others, it harkens to many of the shennanigans of the resource stocks on the Venture Exchange, thus the conditioned response. The way retail has been so often treated by so many of those companies, it's no wonder that everyone smells a rat.

We don't even know when the options may be granted, who gets them, the terms of the grant, yet people want to vote it down (which by the way, I don't believe will happen, no matter what people here think of the collective power of this group).

Also, think of this - if options were granted with an exercise price of $1.25 Canadian today, with a "wink wink" to the grantee, would the grantee really be all that excited about that? This stock has proven difficult to move upward, and I doubt any of the potential grantees are dumb enough to think that winking management can move the stock without substantive progress in the business, whatever that may entail. So, I would say anyone that accepts the options, is pretty much sold on the idea that substantive progress will get the price moving "up and to the right." By the way, ever think about that phrase? Is "to the right" necessary - LOL, ever see a stock chart move to the left?

Unless those options get granted at less than market value (in which case market value will likely soon thereafter sink to meet the strike price), then the grantees win and we win. True, we don't win as much, no argument there, but that's in the short term. Eventually, if the options are awarded properly, it might save the company some cash in the short term and serve to keep key people on in the longer term.