Aiming to become the global leader in chip-scale photonic solutions by deploying Optical Interposer technology to enable the seamless integration of electronics and photonics for a broad range of vertical market applications

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Message: Re: Dilutive effects of a stock option plan

I would disagree that issuing BB and Denselight management options doe s nothing but dilute. The vesting period of 4 years helps them focus on increasing the stock price over that time frame. That is good for all shareholders. The question is how generous should that be? Last year over 11.6 million options were handed out - more than half of that total to one person. Not that he isn't a key individual but that seems very generous. There were 9.6075 million options left in the existing pool to the cap of 36.326 million at year end, and if the assumptions around excercise of options recently are correct, there are currently substantially more than that available (if PC has excercised 4 mln, there are 4 mln more - or am I interpreting the plan incorrectly?).

How many employees have we got?

How many options should we be granting the average employee?

Are we handing these things out every year?

Are we comfortable with the idea of possibly making the employees so wealthy some of them are potentially less interested in working?

Should there be a cap on the maximum number of options handed out per year? - Last years' dilution factor on options (not including the dilution we suffered for the warrants - and we shouldn't confuse the 2 very different factors behind dilution, warrants are a different issue, a necessary evil taken on to keep the company alive) was substantially more than 5%.

These are all important questions. My point is that they should be carefully considered. 20% is not an unusually high number for a growth company but extremely high for a mature one, so where does this end? Are we going to be asked to re-up every year to 20%, or, is there a glide path in mind to a more reasonable number? Is there any thought at all about what the future option path should be?

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