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Home > Stock Options > Articles Online > Corporate Performance >
These findings represent solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views in any way of the universities or other organizations that assisted with the research project and the collection of the data. The professors conducting this analysis were not compensated by any of the sponsoring organizations. The findings are retrospective and are presented solely for the purpose of research. The authors would like to thank the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) and their partners for providing use of the data for this analysis. We would like to thank the Industrial Relations Research Association study group on pay systems and Steve Director of the SMLR for their helpful comments. Sean Way provided research assistance.
This report compares the performance of corporations that offer their employees broad-based stock option plans to those that do not offer their employees broad-based stock option plans. Broad-based stock option plans are important to study because of their possible role in aligning worker and shareholder interests, encouraging job creation in knowledge-related industries, helping corporations cope with tight labor markets, and involving more citizens in sharing the fruits of capitalism. Nevertheless, little is actually known about their objective performance beyond the case histories of specific companies.
The analysis is based on a study of 490 companies: a survey of 105 corporations with broad-based stock option plans and 385 additional companies that were identified as offering broad-based stock options to a majority of their full-time employees. A broad-based stock option plan is one in which a majority of the full-time employees of a corporation actually receive (rather than are merely eligible for) stock options over a reasonable period of time. Unlike corporate plans that only include a small number of top executives, the broad-based plans included in this survey actually distributed an average of 45% of recent stock option grants to non-management employees. The figure is 55% in the biotechnology and computer industries. We compare stock option companies to all public companies that do not have broad-based stock option plans using Standard and Poor's Compustat database as a source of financial information, and to pairs of similar companies in their industry groups. The performance criteria used were productivity, annual and cumulative total shareholder return over the 1992-1997 period, Tobin’s q, return on assets, and fixed wage compensation per employee.
The results of this study suggest that there is no systematic evidence publicly-traded corporations with broad-based stock option plans had worse performance than the larger group of publicly-traded corporations that did not adopt the plans or industry group pairs regarding productivity, total shareholder return, Tobin’s q, or return on assets. Indeed, there is a lot of evidence that the broad-based companies performed better. There is unambiguous evidence that broad-based stock option companies had statistically significantly higher productivity levels and annual growth rates compared to non-broad-based stock option companies in general and among their peers. This is clearly demonstrated by evidence comparing the broad-based companies to the non-broad-based firms before they instituted the plans and after they instituted the plans.
The total shareholder return findings are that over the 1992-1997 period broad-based stock option companies perform as well as non-stock option companies in Compustat in general and among their peers and sometimes exceed the total shareholder returns of these comparison groups. The actual average and median cumulative total shareholder returns for all groups of broad-based stock option companies from 1992-1997 exceed those of all non-broad-based stock option companies in Compustat. The average cumulative total shareholder returns of all broad-based stock option companies in the study statistically significantly exceed those of all non-broad-based Compustat companies. And the actual average and median cumulative total shareholder returns for all broad-based stock option companies in the study as a group also exceed those of the Compustat 500 from 1992-1997. For another measure of market value, Tobin’s q, the levels of Tobin’s q of broad-based stock option companies in general tend to be higher than the Tobin’s q levels of the non-broad-based stock option companies although there is some mixed evidence and this is not the case regarding annual growth rates in Tobin’s q. The available evidence suggests that the levels of return on assets of broad-based stock option companies may be significantly higher than that of the non broad-based stock option companies although there is inconclusive evidence regarding annual growth rates in return on assets and some mixed evidence of this effect remains.
Our interpretation of these findings is that the performance of the firms using broad-based stock options appears to equal or exceed the dilution that these plans initially would have caused. As noted, we are not analyzing data on the specific expectations articulated by each of the firms in our samples adopting broad-based stock options Obviously, dilution may have occurred in certain individual cases. But the systematic analysis of broad-based stock option companies yields little evidence of dilution to shareholders over this period and much evidence of opportunities for shareholders and employees. It appears that a large sector of the U.S. economy has used broad-based stock options to restructure compensation so that the interests of shareholders and broad groups of employees are aligned. The study indicates that the performance of the firms after the introduction of the broad-based stock options essentially paid for the stock options. If these firms installed broad-based stock options in order to attract and retain workers in a tight labor market in order to secure their expectations of continued returns to shareholders, then the broad-based stock options can also be viewed as a success for that reason.
Regarding the compensation levels and growth of broad-based stock option firms, this analysis found that broad-based stock option companies did not substitute stock options for fixed wage cuts and that they continued to maintain a compensation edge in fixed pay that they had before the introduction of broad-based stock options. However, broad-based stock option companies did not continue to increase wages beyond their earlier edge. This can be viewed as evidence that firms that were high compensation firms before the introduction of broad-based stock options may have used the program to restructure their compensation systems and align them with shareholders by perhaps abandoning further increases in their fixed wage compensation edge and providing these further increases in the form of broad-based stock options.
While our data have distinct limitations, they certainly lend some support to the position that broad-based stock option payments during the period studied may have significantly contributed to unmeasured and hidden wage inflation. Both the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor have raised this issue. The reason is that this study found no systematic evidence of any kind that companies that adopted broad-based stock option plans reduced their fixed compensation in any significant way. There was no wage substitution according to this evidence. This suggests that stock option payments were on top of fixed wages for a set of companies that the evidence establishes as already being compensation leaders. Indeed, this story is consistent a number of reports of a tight and tightening labor market where broad-based stock options are playing a role in attracting and retaining employees. Some reports suggest that some employers are frantic and that the situation especially in technology companies is reaching crisis proportions. (Richtel 1999)
The report is written for the non-technical reader and includes a detailed Appendix at the end to assist the non-technical reader in reviewing our data in more detail. This report can be used by outside shareholders, executives and boards of directors, employees, and unions to assess the effectiveness of the broad-based stock option phenomenon in retrospect. The average performance effects we have described can be used to benchmark companies. The findings are also relevant to: 1) shareholder/company conflicts over evaluating past stock option programs or approving new programs; 2) legislative and public policy discussions in the U.S. Congress about whether to encourage stock options; and 3) questions by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Department of Labor about the impact of stock options on corporate performance, U.S. compensation systems, and ultimately the Employment Cost Index.
This study reports on the financial performance of public corporations with broad-based stock option plans in comparison to corporations without such plans using a recent survey and public information on companies that have announced such programs. The authors first presented these findings at an academic conference in 2000 (Sesil, Kroumova, Kruse, and Blasi 2000). Broad-based stock option plans are important to study because of their possible role in aligning worker and shareholder interests, encouraging job creation in knowledge-related industries, helping corporations cope with tight labor markets, and involving more citizens in sharing the fruits of capitalism. Nevertheless, little is actually known about their objective performance beyond the case histories of specific companies. Scholars and institutional investors and other observers have been properly cautious about ascribing broad-based stock options a role in positive company performance during a long-running bull market without careful studies. Nevertheless, the plans now appear to be ubiquitous with regular media stories about stock option bargaining by job seekers with prospective employers, the new Internet rich, high-tech stock option compensation, millionaire janitors, and high school students who get stock options for summer work. The National Center for Employee Ownership estimates that there are over 3,000 active stock option plans in which a majority of full-time employees participate as of May of 2000.
The New York Stock Exchange classifies as "broad-based" those plans that offer options to 20% or more of a company’s employees. According to the National Center for Employee Ownership, a reasonable definition of a broad-based stock option plan is one where a majority of the full-time employees of a corporation actually receive (rather than are merely eligible for) stock options over a reasonable period of time. (Weeden, Carberry, and Rodrick 1998: 185) This study imposes a stricter definition: a broad-based plan includes a majority of non-management employees. Aside from how many employees are included in such plans, a key metric is what percent of the stock options in a plan actually go to non-executives. Unlike corporate plans that only include a small number of top executives and give them all or most of the stock options, the broad-based plans included in this survey actually distributed an average of 45% of recent stock option grants to non-management employees. In fact, in the biotechnology and computer industries, the corporations in the survey actually distributed 55% of recent stock option grants to non-management employees. (Weeden, Carberry, and Rodrick 1998) The performance measures that are examined are productivity, return on assets, Tobin’s q (a measure of market value) and total shareholder return over the period 1992-1997. This report is written for the non-technical reader and includes a detailed Appendix at the end to assist the non-technical reader in reviewing the data in more detail.
Over the last ten years a quiet shift has been taking place from the exclusive dependence on a system of fixed wages and benefits to a greater role for equity stakes in companies. While the shift originally began with the rapid growth of stock option grants to executives, companies are structuring remuneration for broader groups of employees using stock options. While these may not be accompanying wage cuts, they may be substituting for wage increases. The phenomenon includes union as well as nonunion employees. In 1995, 8200 Bakery, Confectionery & Tobacco Workers International employees at Phillip Morris ratified a contract that gives them small fixed wage increases and potentially lucrative stock option-like promissory shares out into the future. (Somasundaram 1995) A 1998 survey of 98 companies found that 36%of the firms had union employees and 58% made them eligible to receive options. (Weeden, Carberry, and Rodrick 1998: 17) Another study of 20 firms with $1-50. billion in revenue found that half of those with union employees made them eligible for stock options. (Hewitt Associates 1997: 20). The National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) in Oakland, California estimates that 7-10 million employees actually receive stock options as of May of 2000. This represents a substantial increase since 1991 when the NCEO estimated there were about 1,000 companies with 1 million employees in such plans. This number of employees probably surpasses the 7.7 million employees in ESOPs and stock bonus plans.
Part of the reason for the rise in stock options is the tight and tightening labor market and the explosion in high technology job creation. And economic growth. American companies expect to create 1.6 million new information technology jobs this year according to a recent industry survey. While many jobs are in the software and Internet industries, the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) said that about a third of the openings will be for technical support workers, who help companies install, maintain and troubleshoot new high-tech equipment. Companies are concerned that they will not be able to fill these new positions, the survey found. Based on the qualifications of current applicants, they estimated that more than half of the openings--or about 843,000--may be difficult to fill. (Associated Press 2000) This has led some journalists to write about "frantic" competition for workers. (Richtel 1999) Some observers believe that the health of the economy is directly related to how workers are recruited and compensated in the high tech industry. As the ITAA President, Harris Miller said: "IT workers represent a much bigger slice of the total work force than previously imagined and, as we have stressed over the years, the nation's economic future is tied to the availability of appropriately skilled workers." According to the Associated Press, the ITAA estimates that a total of 10 million Americans work in information technology jobs. Behind tech support, the fastest-growing jobs categories are database developers and administrators; programmers and software developers; and people who design and manage Internet sites. Among other categories included in the survey were technical writers, digital media specialists and systems integrators. Recently, these developments have initiated a debate in the European Union and several countries in Latin America and Asia over whether their economic and legal systems have made sufficient room for stock-based compensation. There have been claims that traditional compensation systems are hurting high technology development and job creation in these countries. These additional developments make an objective assessment of broad-based plans highly relevant.
While the precise incidence of broad-based in the nation as a whole and different size categories of companies remains an open question, research on the incidence of broad-based stock option plans from many quarters suggests that it is a significant phenomenon. One of the problems in these estimates is that the studies often do not distinguish between employees eligible for stock options and those who actually received them. In 1998, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board’s economists in 12 regions surveyed 415 companies in varied industries and found that about a third had broad-based programs and 37% had broadened the participation in the last 2 years. And 6.7% of companies offered stock options to employees of lower occupational levels such as managers and professionals. The Federal Reserve Board study concluded that, "Over the past few years, stock option grants to employees have become an increasingly common method of compensation." (Lebow, Sheiner, Slifman, and Starr-McCluer 1999: 11) A survey in 1995 by the Association of Quality and Participation found 13% of Fortune 1000 companies offer stock options to 60% or greater of their employees. While is hard to distinguish in the surveys between companies that merely make employees eligible for broad-based stock options versus companies that actually offer the options themselves to the employees, these and other surveys suggest increasing popularity for this practice. Arriving at the definitive national estimate of non-managerial employees receiving stock options will ultimately be determined by the results of a survey of a national random sample of about 2000 establishments that is now being carried out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. Nevertheless, there appears to be no question that this phenomenon constitutes an important societal development.
Nevertheless, despite this growing importance, we actually know very little about these broad-based stock option programs beyond the few details about them that have been contained in the public announcements of many public companies in the press. Typically, newspaper accounts focus on the experiences of one or just a few companies. Most of what we know about these broad-based stock option plans has to do with how they function rather than how they influence company performance or affect individual workers. This is ironic given the fact that the assumption is that they do improve company performance. A detailed report on the functioning of these plans was issued by the National Center for Employee Ownership in 1998 based on surveys filled out by 141 companies of 1,360 companies that were identified as possibly having such plans. That report, Current Practices in Stock Option Plan Design, (Weeden, Carberry, and Rodrick 1998) provides detailed information on who gets stock options, how they are allocated, how they are distributed between managers and non-managers, the type of options, the vesting periods, and company issues such as repricing, overhang, dilution and related communication and employee participation programs.
A further limitation in understanding the performance of broad-based stock option plans is the environment in which they diffused as a corporate innovation. Stocks have performed particularly well during this period and we have witnessed an explosion in the growth of technology companies, an Internet revolution, an Internet start-up boom, and huge run-ups in the stocks of many of these companies. Indeed, irrational exuberance has characterized this market until recently. In this context, it can be very difficult to draw conclusions from the experiences of one or two companies. Indeed, the general press and to some extent the business press have adopted a formulaic of broad-based stock options: "companies use options to attract the best employees, companies are exploding with growth, stock prices soar, thus workers get richer and shareholders benefit." Oddly enough, virtually a decade in broad-based stock option boom has taken place without an extensive public assessment of this mantra.
This current report uses the 1998 detailed data from the NCEO survey on 105 companies with broad-based stock option plans along with additional data on an additional 385 public companies that have been publicly identified as having broad-based stock option plans in order to provide the first comprehensive analysis of the impacts of these plans on company-wide performance in the U.S. economy. This is accomplished by using company performance data from Standard & Poor's Compustat and merging it with data from the surveys and public information on broad-based stock option plans.
The shift toward stock option compensation originally began with the rapid spread and the rapid growth of stock option grants to executives. Then, it spread throughout the management and professional ranks of mainly high technology companies. Gradually, many companies applied portions of future remuneration for broader groups of employees to stock-based compensation. In the last decade many large corporations that are household names such as Pepsi, Microsoft, Delta Air Lines, Wendy’s, Starbucks, Merrill Lynch, Proctor & Gamble, and Oracle Computers, implemented broad-based stock option programs for their employees. Indeed, at one extreme of this phenomenon, a 1998 survey of the top 250 corporations in the U.S. found that fifteen companies had set aside over 25% of their weighted average shares outstanding for equity incentives for upper management and employees. (Weeden, Carberry and Rodrick 1998: 185). This study found that the average percent of total shares outstanding allocated for compensation has increased from the 0.3%-0.5% range in the 1960s to 2% on average in 1998. The reasons listed in this study include a combination of a corporate commitment to management ownership, a growing practice of extending stock participation lower and more broadly in corporate ranks, and the widespread use of equity as a recruitment and retention tool to hold employees with critical knowledge in a competitive labor market. In a separate survey, 83% of mutual fund managers said they were favorably influenced, at least sometimes, when a company grants stock options to rank and file employees (Pearl Meyer, 1998: 5). More recently, the rapid development of hundreds of Internet, e-commerce, and Internet-infrastructure-related public companies has led to a further explosion of broad-based stock option plans whose full extent may be staggering.
As we have noted, it is noteworthy and somewhat surprising that there has been little systematic empirical investigation of the implications of these programs for company performance. Occasionally, institutional shareholder leaders such as Warren Buffett or important economic leaders such as Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan have commented critically on the phenomenon, but little systematic evidence has been presented in the public domain.
A variety of theories appear to predict different effects of broad-based stock options on company performance. Agency theory predicts incentive conflicts arise because the interests of senior managers are not aligned with the interests of shareholders. In order to bring the interests of the two parties into closer alignment owners incur cost in the form of incentive contracts (Jensen and Meckling, 1976). However, the notion that broad-based stock options might increase firm performance is based on extending the rationale of incentive contact theory to employees beyond the executive suite. Certainly, it is at least debatable whether the levels to impact the company are available to a large group of employees. Some other theories suggest that stock options might lower the information costs in a company because managers’ and employees’ interests become more closely aligned. This recognises that employees have access to information that may be valuable to management. The presence of a broad-based stock option group incentive scheme may result in employees having the necessary incentive to communicate, or act on their superior information. Additionally, an argument from efficiency wage theory may apply to broad-based stock option plans: the theory says that due to the higher wage rate, employees who work for firms which pay above the market rate may be less likely to quit and more likely to exert maximum effort. Thus, it is possible that high effort-exerting employees are attracted to companies that pay higher compensation as a result of broad-based stock options.
Profit sharing theories would also tend to predict a positive connection between broad-based stock options and corporate performance. (see Kruse 1993). Profit sharing theory is also relevant to broad-based stock option plans because of the empirical evidence indicating that lower level employees do essentially use such plans like cash profit sharing plans. Profit sharing theory thus suggests a more positive prediction. A number of microeconomic studies have found that profit sharing companies are more productive than firms without profit sharing although researchers have noted that it is hard to distinguish the effects of profit sharing from other human resource management practices. (Ichniowski, Shaw, and Prennushi 1997; Kruse 1993; Weitzman and Kruse 1990). These studies have been cited in a recent U.S. Federal Reserve Board review of the subject. (Lebow, Sheiner, Slifman, and Martha Starr-McCluer 1999: 7-8)
Other theories appear to predict zero or negative impact on performance. Attempting to extrapolate theoretical considerations from executive share schemes to broad based schemes may not be an accurate comparison because the incentive effects of broad-based stock options would be more prone to the incentive diluting effects of the free-rider or 1/n problem. For example, this means that if there are 100 employees in a company, any individual employee is only likely to see the impact on his or her compensation of 1/100. Some theorists have questioned whether that employee is likely to exert real effort as a result and some suggest he or she is more likely to be a free rider on the efforts of others. On the other hand, some thinkers believe that more fluid work organizations that are less hierarchical, more team-based work organizations with more employee involvement and empowerment, and more knowledge-based work organizations with highly trained workers, would be more likely to have workers to are not free riders but who actually monitor one another and facilitate one another’s efforts.
Some scholars (Conte and Svejnar 1990) suggest that more productive employees may sort themselves into firms where more compensation is placed at risk. Another consideration is if workers are in a flat (or negative) real fixed wage environment, any gains associated with broad-based stock option plans may be perceived as an annual cost of living adjustment. The provision of such plans can be seen as compensating employees for taking on the risk of working in a flat fixed wage environment and may not result in an incentive effect. From this perspective, one would not expect that such plans would automatically result in statistically significant positive firm performance impacts. Their purpose may be to attract and retain employees in a tight labor market and not to create a framework for a high performance workplace. Given recent data on the value of stock options, this may be plausible. The NCEO’s 1998 study found that the average value of the most recent stock options granted for nonmanagement employees in 1998 was $37-41,000 for professional and technical employees and around $12,500. for administrative employees. (Weeden, Carberry and Rodrick 1998: 9).
Some observers predict that stock options may actually hurt corporate performance. Commenting on the executive stock option research tradition, Kevin J. Murphy says that the academic evidence "directly linking current grants to future performance is, frankly, rather flimsy." (Murphy 1998) One common objection to the positive spin put on stock options is the observation that a firm with a broad-based stock option plan may experience significant increases in its shareholder value over a certain time period. But if this company is compared to its entire industry group, the rosy story that employees did well and shareholders did well, may be revealed to be a hoax if the company actually did worse than the rest of its industry group. For this reason, some companies have structured their stock option programs so that they assure some type of above average performance:
Can broad-based stock options be expected to have a positive impact on shareholder value given the differences between CEOs and these employees? Comparing broad-based stock options to executive stock options may not be an accurate comparison because the incentive effects of broad-based stock options would be more prone to the incentive diluting effects of the free-rider or 1/n problem. Another problem is that theorists have stressed that a guarantee must be provided that the manager will retain the securities (stock options or stock ownership) during the period he or she is making decisions in order to maintain an alliance with outside capital contributors. If this is so, then the total benefits from reduced consumption of managerial perks are capitalized into the prices of the financial claims issued to outside equity holders. (Haugen and Senbet 1981). But the studies of Huddart and Lang (1996) suggest this is a problem with a broad-based employee group because they do not hold onto the stock options long enough.
Our study will try to determine if the theories predicting better or no or worse corporate performance from broad-based stock options are consistent with an analysis of the evidence. While we do not distinguish whether the companies offer broad-based stock option plans with "performance strings attached" our research approach is designed to rigorously separate out the performance of these broad-based stock option companies from the performance of the market as a whole and their industry group peers. Only such a comparison can move the discussion of broad-based stock option programs beyond the level of individual cases, story-telling and outright boosterism.
As noted, the available evidence provides support that broad-based stock options are increasing at a substantial rate. Unfortunately, many studies do not distinguish between companies what offer possible eligibility in broad-based stock option plans to employees versus those that actually provide stock options to non-management employees. With this caveat, Figure 1 reviews the mounting evidence on the incidence of such plans and the attention given to key issues such as dilution and repricing. None of the twenty surveys reviewed in Figure 1 estimate the incidence of such plans using national random samples. Indeed, the surveying of client organizations by self-interested consultants with clients who are likely to engage in the practices being surveyed has produced several quite large estimates of the incidence of these plans. Nevertheless, four of these studies sample important populations of companies and find an increasing use of such plans. The William R. Mercer studies of the proxies of the 350 largest public companies found an increase in the percent of companies actually granting stock options to all employees from 5.7% in 1993 to 10.3% in 1997. (Mercer 1997; Weeden, Carberry, and Rodrick 1998: 199) The Center for Effective Organizations of University of the University of Southern California studies of 279 of Fortune 1000 firms in 1993 and 212 firms in 1996 found that the percent offering such plans to 100 employees remained at 10%, but the percent offering broad plans to more than 20% of employees went up from 30% to 51%. Unfortunately, it is unclear what this survey means by "offering." Because the estimates are so high, they have a high probability of referring to eligibility. (Lawler, Mohrman, and Ledford 1998: 34) The Arthur Anderson survey of the largest 1250 global corporations found 33%offered such programs to all employees and 11% planned to add them in the future. Finally, in 1998, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board’s economists in 12 regions surveyed 415 companies in varied industries and found that about a third had broad-based programs and 37% had broadened the participation in the last 2 years. (Lebow, Sheiner, Slifman, and Starr-McCluer 1999: 11) 2 Studies of particular industries -- like the ShareData/American Electronics Association and Westward Pay studies -- and industry analyses have indicated a high incidence among high technology firms. The ShareData study found a four-fold increase in the number of larger companies that made stock options available to all employees. (ShareData 1997). It is very common in the stock option literature to find that data on eligibility and use of stock options from some of these studies is systematically misquoted to represent actual grants to employees.
In Figure 1, only the William M. Mercer Company studies from 1993-1997 show a clear pattern of expansion of broad-based stock option programs that actually grant stock to employees. These studies indicate that a majority of employees were receiving stock options in 5.7% of the largest 350 companies in 1993 and that this almost doubled to 10.3% of the largest 350 companies in 1997. The Mercer data indicate how easy it is to over-rate the extent of broad-based stock option plans and confuse eligibility for options versus actually getting options: while 30% of the largest 350 corporations make broad groups of employees eligible only a third of them actually gave options to a majority of employees. We have reviewed a number of executive briefing materials distributed to major corporations and discovered that they tend to exaggerate the extent of broad-based stock option diffusion as a result of this problem.
While it is tempting to ascribe the rising incidence of these plans to their economic performance, the recent U.S. Federal Reserve study underlines the widely-held view that such plans may be popular because currently generally accepted accounting principles allow firms to record the expense for these options as zero. While this favorable method of accounting has been controversial with the Financial Accounting Standards Board, institutional investors, and some shareholders, corporations have engaged in repeated successful struggles with these groups in the 1990s to retain the favorable practice.
While stock options do not create a significant accounting cost for companies as a resultof the FASB rules, the impact on shareholders is very real. Writing in Forbes magazine, Gretchen Morgenson has said, "Options dilute per-share earnings because they increase the divisor applied to net profits to figure per-share earnings." (1998) The financial impact of these plans has been mainly evaluated in relation to their impact on outside shareholders although a few non-systematic studies have looked at other performance issues. Four studies have estimated the percent of market value represented by all outstanding options. In the late nineties, the percent of dilution ranged from 5.5% at the median to 17.4% with the higher estimates consistently coming from high technology company surveys, although a recent 1998 National Center for Employee Ownership study found the average dilution to by 12.6% with a third of the companies above 15% in their survey on which the data for this report is based. Another 1998 study of the 200 largest industrial and service corporations put the average at about 13.2% for all options outstanding for all equity programs except stock purchase plans and ESOPs. (Pearl Meyer, 1998). Given that most institutional investors object to dilution potential above 10%, it is clear that broad-based stock options could potentially represent a significant drain on total shareholder return. Indeed, there appears to be a brewing conflict with outside shareholders over options in general. The Investor Responsibility Research Center in Washington, D.C. has been monitoring shareholder votes on stock option plans and finds that rejections of the plans by shareholders are on the rise. (IRRC, 2000) According to Watson Wyatt Worldwide, the average overhang among major companies hit 13% in 1997, up from 5% in 1988. Some companies have adopted an evergreen provision for stock option share authorization whereby 1% of their shares is automatically added to the stock option pool annually. (Hewitt Associates 1997: 24)
Another way stock options affect corporate performance is through repricing. Four studies have examined the repricing of options where corporations change the option strike price after it becomes clear to them that their employees will not reap any financial benefit because the share price is not increasing as rapidly as they originally had hoped. This issue is also very controversial with outside -- especially institutional – investors because many believe that repricing stock options involves changing the rules of the fair game when a company’s employees are clearly losing the fair game. Managers have responded that restless employees must be kept happy or they will walk out the door and take precious human capital – so important to technology companies—out the door with them. Studies show that 15-36% of companies reprice their options with 36% engaging in repricing in the latest 1998 study. (Weeden, Carberry, and Rodrick 1998) A Business Week survey suggests that about 36% of companies reprice options. (Business Week 1998) After the U.S. Government formally proposed the breakup of Microsoft, the company took a step similar to repricing by rescuing all of its employees whose options were now underwater. Microsoft issued employees 70 million new stock options at $66.625 each at an indicated value of $1.6 billion. (Morgensen 2000) Since August 12, 1998, FASB says that companies that reprice their options need to charge their earnings to the extent that the share price exceeds the exercise price to which the option plan was lowered.
The key question about both the dilution and the repricing issues is whether broad-based stock option plans’ dilution effect is greater than any observable positive effect on total shareholder return net of industry group performance, or not. Reporter Gretchen Morgensen of The New York Times has written clearly and bluntly about how shareholders approach this dilemma regarding Microsoft but it applies generally to companies with broad-based plans: "For years Miscosoft stock climbed on the strength of enviable profits. One reason for its profitability was its reliance on stock options, which cut costs while keeping workers happy and rich. The rising stock also meant that few shareholders groused about the dilution to earnings presented by 1.1 billion shares Microsoft says it has issued since 1990, net of buybacks, under stock option and purchase plans." (2000: BU1) Indeed, the previous quotation underlines two possible sets of standards in separating out the dilution effect of broad-based stock option plans: first, shareholders can argue that if they make money they do not care if employees make money ("few shareholders groused about the dilution"); second, a tougher standard would be to argue that companies that issued broad-based stock options need to prove that their total shareholder return was not negatively affected relative to their industry group and the market as a whole, whether or not their shareholders also made some money. In this study we shall apply the second and tougher standard to evaluating the impact of broad-based stock option plans.
There are a few non-systematic studies of some aspects of the economic performance impact of broad-based options. Watson Wyatt’s 1993 survey of 139 companies in 22 industries with stock option and stock purchase plans computed the median reduction in earnings per share (EPS) from all stock options would be 10.8% if they were expensed. For the high technology sector this reduction was 50%, although for other companies the median was 6%. The 1997 study of high technology public and private companies by WestWard Pay Strategies again found that the median reduction in EPS would have been 6% although it ranged from 1% to 78%! In their 1996 analysis of 434 of the fastest growing mostly private product and service companies, Coopers & Lybrand found that companies offering broad-based stock options experienced revenue growth of 37% in the 12 months preceding the survey compared to 25% for companies not offering stock options. And the stock option companies projected revenue growth of 40% in the next 12 months compared to 24% for the non-stock option companies. Unfortunately, this study dealt only with companies offering such options and provided no data on actual grants. (Coopers & Lybrands, 1996) But this trend was supported by the 1998 U.S. Federal Reserve Board study found that 44.1% of the fast growth offered broad-based stock options while only 32% of the moderate growth, no growth, or contracting firms offered such programs. (Lebow, Sheiner, Slifman, and McCluer 1999: 11). A 1997 study by Hewitt Associates examined 20 publicly-traded companies with over $10 billion in revenues across many industries with non-executive stock option plans. Sixty-five percent of these companies offered the options to all employees. The study reports that "Companies are far less likely to think that their stock option program has a positive effect on their business results than any other kind of variable pay program." (Hewitt 1997:1) When Hewitt compared the self-reported business performance of these 20 companies with 173 companies using other types of broad-based variable pay plans in its Variable Compensation Measurement Database, the small sample of companies with non-executive stock option grants had less favorable results. Thirty five percent of the broad-based stock option companies reported that the plans did not meet expected results. Hewitt also found that fewer broad-based stock option companies actually believed the plan helped improve business results (59%) than companies with other variable pay plans. (75%). However, none of the stock option companies reported adverse results as was the case with 21% of the variable pay plan companies. (Hewitt Associates 1997: 14) Admittedly, this study was based on a very small sample and its findings need to be reconfirmed by a larger study. On the other hand, a different set of studies by the Center for Effective Organizations of management’s subjective evaluations of the effectiveness of stock option programs in 1993 and 1996, found that they were rated second only to profit sharing plans in 1993 and above profit sharing plan in 1996 in management’s opinions about their performance impacts. (Lawler, Mohrman, and Ledford 1998: 96.) Again, these observations should not be trusted unless they can be systematically confirmed. While the 1998 U.S. Federal Reserve Board study did not attempt to quantify these economic performance effects, the Board economists did ask compensation professionals at the firms which they surveyed to opine on this issue. They concluded:
Many of the firms we spoke with said that one reason for moving toward variable-pay plans was the hope that, by giving employees more of a stake in the firm’s fortunes, employees would have more incentive to suggest productivity-enhancing changes. And, as we noted above, the literature contains some empirical support for the view that firms with profit-sharing plans are more productive than other firms. Our informal discussions with compensation professionals also seemed to point to a cautious optimism about the success of these experiments in variable pay. In some cases, firms seemed clearly to believe that these incentives to promote cost-consciousness on the part of employees were bearing fruit... Some firms suggested that productivity was improving; but the extent to which the improvement was due to the variable compensation schemes was hard to determine. None of the representatives we spoke with said that they think variable pay has harmed productivity... One issue that emerged from our discussions, and is reflected in some academic studies as well, is that disentangling the effect of pay practices per se from other aspects of the work relationship can be difficult. (Lebow, Sheiner, Slifman, and McCluer 1999: 11, 13, 25.)
Finally, depending on how one conceives of broad-based stock options, past research on both profit sharing and employee stock ownership may be relevant their performance effects. Profit sharing research appears to be immediately relevant because the net effect of an employee exercising profitable stock options and selling them is a cash share in increases in a company’s stock price. This is very similar to profit sharing. Profit sharing has been consistently linked to better firm performance. In a review of thirty studies with 345 estimates, 92% of the estimates indicate a positive relationship between profit sharing and productivity or profitability. (Bell and Kruse 1995). The findings are strongest for before and after studies where, productivity goes up an average of 4 to 5 percent in the year of adoption while productivity growth following adoption is similar to that of other firms. (Kruse 1993) Regarding employee stock ownership, it has been established that an important source of executive stock ownership was the exercise of previously granted stock options. (Hall and Liebman 1998). To the extent that broader groups of employees exercise stock options and hold onto them, employee ownership research may be directly relevant to broad-based plans. Moreover, it is possible that the attachment to the firm engendered by ongoing employee stock ownership may be similar to that engendered by long-term holdings of stock options, although this remains to be explained and proven. If either of these observations is plausible, then employee ownership research may be relevant. Briefly, evidence indicates that the stock prices of firms with more than 5% employee ownership in 1991 had higher stock price growth than otherwise-similar firms over the 1980s. (Blasi, Conte, and Kruse 1996). And an index of public firms with more than 10% employee ownership has generally beat stock market indexes since it began in 1992. (American Capital Strategies 1998). And companies with 20% or more employee ownership in 1983 had similar productivity and average Tobin’s q to non-employee ownership firms, but statistically better return on assets and total shareholder return. Several hypothetical portfolios of these employee ownership firms outperformed market-wide portfolios and a portfolio made up of a control group of their peers from January 1984 to July 1996 on an equal-weighted and a capital weighted basis and when they were adjusted for risk. (Blair, Kruse, and Blasi 2000: 274-277) A detailed review and meta-analysis of all systematic statistical studies of ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) are split between neutral and favorable findings. Employee ownership firms appear to perform as well as non-employee ownership firms in most studies. They rarely perform worse. But we have identified a disproportionate of positive and significant estimates by a variety of researchers. The average estimated productivity difference between ESOP and non-ESOP firms is 6%, and the average estimated productivity increase in the year of ESOP adoption is 4%, while average productivity growth following adoption is similar between ESOP and non-ESOP firms. (Kruse and Blasi 1997)
Thus, while these studies involve no wide-ranging systematic assessment of the performance of broad-based stock option plans, they arrive at several suggestions:
Using a systematic analysis of evidence, we will attempt to assess if these observations can be confirmed or not.
It is an outstanding issue whether one can expect the same performance impacts from stock option plans for non-management employees as one expects from stock option plans for senior management. In the following section, we assess research on this question. We also assess the sizes of the samples on which these studies were conducted in order to provide an overall context for research on broad-based stock option plans. It makes sense to review the research on senior management stock options and firm performance in order to set a baseline for expectations. The main conclusions on the performance impacts of senior management stock options come from two large studies, Jensen and Murphy (1990) and Hall and Liebman (1998). The first study initially found that there was not much of a performance effect before the 1990s but the second study found very different results after 1990. Obviously, during this period stock option compensation packages for senior executives spread rapidly and the stock market soared. Briefly, the results of the new Hall and Liebman study show that the sensitivity of firm performance to CEO stock options has dramatically increased in the last decade. These studies provide a useful context for an examination of the evidence on broad-based stock options. In addition, the nature and size of the datasets on which these studies is based provides a useful metric to evaluate the broad-based stock option dataset.
The percentage of CEOs receiving stock option awards grew from 30% in 1980 to nearly 70% in 1994 and the percentage of CEOs holding any stock options increased from 57% to about 87% over the same period. (Hall and Liebman 1998) A Standard & Poors Compustat study of executive compensation at the 365 largest companies in the U.S. in 1998 found that long-term compensation , namely stock options, made up 80% of the average CEO pay package, up from 72% in 1997. (Reingold 1997) In the earlier study, Jensen and Murphy (1990) reported that: "Our estimates of the pay-performance relation (including pay, options, stockholdings, and dismissal) for CEOs indicate that CEO wealth changes $3.25 for every $1,000. change in shareholder wealth." (p. 225). To arrive at this estimate, they examined 2,213 CEOs serving in 1,295 corporations listed in the Executive Compensation Surveys of Forbes from 1974 to 1986 with a total of 10,400 CEO years of data to understand the relationship between total CEO pay (excluding stock options) and a $1,000. change in firm value. The study included data on salary, bonus, actual direct management stock ownership, and other benefits and excluded comprehensive stock option data. Then using a much smaller sample of 154 CEOs in 73 Fortune 500 manufacturing firms from 1969-1983 , the researchers studied the value of all stock options granted in different years at different exercise prices and exercise dates and computed total stock option wealth at the end of every year using the Black-Scholes valuation formula. With this computation, they came to an estimate of how stock options fitted into this larger picture of executive compensation. Because data on actual exercise prices were not available, it was assumed that options were always exercised at the highest price observed during the year. They found that the value of CEO stock options increases an average of 14.5 cents for each $1,000. increase in shareholder value and subsequently included this estimate as a component of their overall conclusion. They found that the incentives generated by options were much larger relative to the incentives generated by annual changes in cash compensation (3.3 cents per $1,000. from the larger sample), but stock option incentives were still small relative to the incentives generated by direct stock ownership, which were $2.50 per $1,000. in shareholder wealth. Overall, the earlier 1990 Jensen and Murphy study concluded that CEO wealth was too insensitive to stock returns to provide proper incentives. They believed that "political forces operating both in the public sector and inside organizations limit large payoffs for exceptional performance." (Jensen and Murphy 1990: 262)
The picture was to change radically by 1998 with a new study of this issue. In 1998, Hall and Liebman reexamined the issue using a much larger and more recent fifteen year panel dataset in the largest publicly-traded companies. This dataset contained detailed information on CEO holdings of stock and stock options for 478 companies in 1980-1994 from proxies and 10-K filings. The distinguishing feature of this study is that it computed the value of the total options held by the CEOs for the current and all previous years using the Block-Scholes formula. And for each year they recalculated the value of all options based on share price information for that year. They focus on the median because mean changes were very misleading as a result of an observed very heavy influence by outliers. They discovered, as noted, that a quite large increase in CEO stock-based compensation occurred between 1980 and 1994. Between 1980 and 1994 the direct compensation (salary, bonus, and the value of annual stock option grants) of CEOs increased by 136% at the median and 209% at the mean in real terms. They found that most of this increase was in the form of stock options which increased the relationship between CEO pay and firm performance. The median elasticity of CEO compensation with respect to firm market value more than tripled from 1.2 to 3.9 between 1980 and 1994, with the 1994 elasticity being 30 times larger than previously reported elasticities. They observed that Jensen and Murphy’s estimates rely on earlier data that predated the explosion in stock option issuance and that they believe that companies subsequently followed the Jensen and Murphy prescription to more closely tie stock compensation to firm performance. They did not question the Jensen and Murphy conclusions for the time period that those researchers used. In fact, they replicated it for that earlier time period.
Nevertheless, Hall and Liebman articulated a subtly different perspective from Jensen and Murphy by questioning whether the entire concept of high sharing rates (i.e. incentives) for CEOs per $1,000. in shareholder value really made inherent sense. Put simply, they argue that a $1,000. sharing rate (in this sense, a stock-based incentive) for CEO compensation per $1,000. in shareholder value is neither a practical nor an efficient idea. In other words, there point is: why give a CEO $1000. for increasing shareholder value $1,000? Why have a one to one sharing rate between companies and executives? They observe that changes in CEO wealth (the numerator) can appear rather small when taken as a fraction of the firm value of a Fortune 500 company. (the denominator) They argue that a one-to-one relationship between CEO pay and firm value may be reasonable for a small firm but that it is not reasonable for a large publicly-traded firm. Initially, they make this point regarding executive stock ownership by arguing that a CEO would not have enough money to buy a significant stock ownership stake in a large Fortune 500 company. Then, they extend this notion to stock option incentives which they say would create too much risk for CEO compensation if a 1 to 1 sharing rate were used. And they posit that when the reality of CEO risk aversion is combined with high risk sharing rates, this would cause CEOs to avoid some high-risk (but positive net present value) investment projects in their companies that really would have been optimal for diversified shareholders. So they argue that high sharing rates may actually distort incentives. Small sharing rates in large companies are therefore the result of the infeasibility (the financing constraint that prevents CEOs from actually owning a large portion of the stock) and nonoptimality (the risk aversion constraint) of having CEO wealth vary one for one with firm value. They suggest that smaller sharing rates than one to one will often yield dollar changes in CEO wealth that are sufficient to produce value-maximizing behavior by the CEO. The actual sharing rates which Hall and Liebman discovered were still larger than the earlier Jensen and Murphy estimates. They came to the following conclusions:
Some observers whom we consulted would argue that the retrospective Hall and Liebman study should not be used to justify the size of many executive stock option packages nor do the studies necessarily prove definitively that it was these executives who were mainly responsible for company success. Some critics argue that more modest executive rewards would also be consistent with having a connection between executive pay and firm performance. These observers believe that sharing of these rewards with the rest of the employees might actually end up compensating a wider range of responsible actors. of these observations. These are important issues and this is an important debate. While we are sympathetic to this point of view, a detailed discussion of these debates further are beyond the scope of the present article. Whatever one’s view on these issues, the Hall and Liebman research definitely provides useful evidence on how widespread executive stock options reflects firm performance.
Executive stock option studies have also reached a number of secondary conclusions which may be relevant to our study. Miller and Scholes have reported that stock option plans may be an attractive part of compensation packages because of tax benefits. (1981) Because of the very favorable accounting treatment of broad-based stock option plans, this suggests that the role these tax incentives play merit closer scrutiny. In an earlier era, tax law changes were in large part responsible for the postwar growth of stock options. Agrawal and Mandelker (1987) found that firms undertaking variance-increasing (decreasing) investments have management compensation contracts with a larger (smaller) common stock and option component. This was consistent with the views of other scholars (Defusco, Johnson, and Zorn 1990) and more recent studies (Guay 1999). This suggests that executive options may encourage entrepreneurial behavior. A number of studies find positive stock market reaction to the announcement of executive compensation plans tied to performance, especially stock option plans consistent with the view that there may be lower agency costs in these companies. (Brickley, Bhagat, and Lease 1985; Larker 1983; Tehranian, Travlos, and Waegelein 1987) This emphasizes the reaction of outside shareholders to the potentially positive agency effects of such plans. But a recent study of 620 stock option awards to Fortune 500 CEOs from 1992-1994 finds that managers who become aware of impending improvements in corporate performance may influence the timing of their compensation committees to award them more stock options as a low-risk method of capitalizing on investors’ expected reactions to news of the improvements. This scholar says that "because CEO option recipients benefit from the remarkable good timing of their rewards, their compensation appears to increase for reasons that have little to do with managerial skill, effort, or performance." (Yermack 1997: 451) Other studies show how executives manipulate corporate dividend policy by reducing dividends when stock options are added to their compensation packages. It is noted that dividends dilute the per-share value of stock. (Lambert, Lanen, and Larcker 1989; Fenn and Liang 1999 ) And scholars have found that management significantly increases the use of share repurchases -- which do not dilute the per-share value of the stock --- as stock options to compensate managers increase. (Jolls, 1998) There is a wealth of empirical evidence which documents a link between the higher debt ratio of the firm and a lower executive compensation-shareholder wealth relationship. (For a review, see John and John 1993)
All of these studies suggest that stock-compensation for executives has a significant relationship on how executives design the financial organization of the firm itself and they point to a level of executive decision-making and strategic choice and perhaps even intention that may not involve employees in broad-based plans. The key findings are those of Hall and Liebman. They suggest that broad-based stock option plans should contribute to firm performance if they follow the lead, the expectations, and evidence of senior management plans in this decade. However, the key question is how will nonmanagerial employees affect the firm given that they are not executives who can engage in large-scale strategic decisions that may be value-adding.
The full meaning of broad-based stock options for companies and workers cannot be properly estimated in a vacuum without understanding the trends in the fixed compensation of CEOs and workers. Whether workers on average have won significant fixed pay increases relative to inflation since the eighties or whether they have had essentially flat fixed wages, will help establish the context for analyzing the performance effects of broad-based stock options. For example, in general, if workers have been generously compensated with inflation-adjusted fixed wages, then broad-based stock option plans throughout the economy would have to demonstrate positive effects on company performance if they are not to be deemed unnecessary excess compensation and an unnecessary dilution of shareholder value. But if workers have seen flat inflation-adjusted incomes, then broad-based stock options throughout the economy may be viewed as a supplement to flat fixed wages that corporations used to reward workers with stock-based pay . On this score, as long as the impact of broad-based stock options on firm performance is zero or not significantly negative, then one can view it as playing a neutral supplementary role to fixed wages. What does the literature indicate? Between 1982 and 1994, Hall and Liebman (1998) demonstrate that the mean real growth of CEO compensation (salary + bonus + the value of stock option grants) increased by 175% or about 8.8% per year. The median growth rates were 120% and 6.8%. The comparable mean real growth rates for all wage and salary workers based on the Employment Cost Index was almost flat during this period at 7.2% or about 0.6% per year from $30,400. in 1982 to $32,600. in 1994. For comparison, the very rich or the top 1.2 percent of the population had a 55.4% change over the same period or an annual rate of 3.7% per year. They calculate that most of the real increase in CEO compensation was due to stock options and stock ownership. (Hall and Liebman 1998: 665, Table III) Note that the Employment Cost Index numbers for workers do not include stock option income. (Lebow , Sheiner, Slifman, and Starr-McCluer 1998:3) Thus, this comparison indicates that in general stock options put CEOs in a very favorable income situation over this period, while the absence of stock options put the average worker in a very disadvantaged position. This is consistent with other data that indicate that those members of the U.S. population whose personal and family incomes went up in the U.S. in recent decades had greater capital incomes. Labor incomes are falling and capital incomes are rising. (Mishel, Bernstein, and Schmitt 1999: 62-71) In effect, the fixed wage and benefit system is collapsing. Those who prosper do so because they have an interest in capital.
What has happened to the workers who did receive stock options? A central controversy about broad-based stock options is whether companies trade off cash compensation with risky benefits, in other words, the companies engage in substitution. Are companies reducing wages and giving employees stock options? Or are companies maintaining fixed wage packages and adding stock options? In effect, what is the role of broad-based stock options in the collapse of the fixed wage system? Is it is extensive or irrelevant? While there is no systematic study of this issue some analyses suggest that options increase compensation. Hewitt Associates’ 1997 study compared the cash compensation of 20 companies with broad-based stock option plans to a larger sample of 152 companies within their Variable Compensation Database and found that in the companies with the broad-based stock option plans, employees actually received more total cash compensation. (Hewitt 1997: 7). In 1998 the National Center for Employee Ownership computed the average value of the most recent stock options on the date of grant to nonmanagement employees for 96 companies with available that are in the sample in our current study. The average value of most recent stock option grants was between $37,000. and $41,000. for professional and technical employees and $12,500. for administrative employees. However, data for administrative and other employees put the average value of an option award in annual or periodic option programs at $6-12,000. depending on the industry group. In this study, the average minimum salary at which employees received options was $18, 718 or $18,000. at the median. The NCEO estimated that the broad-based stock options would result in employees garnering 12-20% of annual pay in the form of exercisable option spreads if the historical performance of the stock market, the typical frequency of grants, and the typical terms of grants were taken into account. (Weeden, Carberry, and Rodrick 1998: 9). But the real implications of this observation depends on whether the stock option grants are simply one-time or truly regular annual or periodic grants. If such programs are only spot events then the ongoing annual impact of a one time grant cannot be presumed to have a meaningful regular annual impact on compensation for a broader group of workers. The 1998 National Center for Employee Ownership Study reported that 81% of the companies actually provide ongoing awards to nonmanagers that are either annual or periodic but regular. And the frequencies are similar across different industry groups. (Weeden, Carberry, and Rodrick 1998: 9, 20.). Thus, the available evidence appears to suggest that broad-based stock option programs do serve as a supplement to wages and thereby do increase total compensation. Indeed, researchers at the U.S. Federal Reserve Board are entertaining a similar conclusion, albeit while making estimates for the effect of stock options on average compensation figures for the entire economy:
Stock option grants never appear in the Employment Cost Index. They do get captured in other measures of compensation, but not in an ideal fashion... (In both the NIPA (the Commerce Dept.’s National Income and Product Accounts data) and the CPH (DOL’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Compensation Per Hour data) series, stock options are not counted as compensation until the exercise date. Thus, during a period of rapid increases in the issuance of stock options, all our remuneration measures will understate the true cost of labor.... We also offer, as an example, some extremely rough calculations of the possible effect on the ECI of stock option grants... Had stock option grants been included in the ECI they might have added about a quarter of a percentage point to annual ECI growth between 1994 and 1998. A similar calculation would be made to estimate the effects on nonfarm compensation per hour of including stock option exercises rather than grants.... Inclusion of stock option exercises would have boosted growth of nonfarm compensation per hour about 3/4 percentage point per year from 1994 to 1998 -- roughly half a percentage point more than compensation growth that includes stock option grants. These calculations assume that stock option grants granted by the largest nonfinancial firms are representative of the entire publicly traded sector.... All told, the effect on aggregate compensation measures of including stock option grants -- and especially, the value of stock option exercises -- is highly uncertain, but our calculations suggest that in recent years stock options have been a not-insignificant part of actual overall compensation growth. (3, 5, 17-19)
Thus, the available evidence suggests that broad-based stock options play a not-insignificant role in supplementing a flat fixed wage system by broadening the compensation schemes of workers to include a greater reliance on capital incomes. However, the existing evidence sheds very little light on the compensation history of the companies that provide broad-based stock options compared to the companies that do not provide them. Our study will look at the compensation history of the companies that use broad-based stock options and we will provide one additional evaluation of whether the Federal Reserve Board’s suspicion that stock option supplement rather than replace compensation might be accurate.
Finally, researchers have looked at how employees in broad-based plans actually go about exercising their options. While it may not be readily apparent, exercising behaviors are a relevant factor in the stock option-firm performance relationship. Let’s examine how this happens. One study of 60,000 employees at 7 companies over ten years found that 90% of employees receiving options sold the stock immediately after they exercised the options. In short, stock options appear to function as cash profit-sharing plans and less as stable employee ownership formats. Indeed, two-thirds of the exercise activity of lower-level employees occurred within six months of the options being vested and "in-the-money", suggesting that lower-level employees may have been more anxious to sell and get the compensation than capitalizing on the optimum value of the options would provide. Indeed, the evidence shows that the employees exercised the options years before they expire and hence sacrifice on the order of a quarter of the option’s expected value! In contrast, senior executives were half as likely to exercise their options within six months. (Huddart and Lang, 1996) A subsequent study (Heath, Huddart, and Lang 1999) demonstrated that a variety of psychological factors affect exercise behavior. They especially emphasize reference points based on maximum stock price that was achieved in the previous year. They conclude that this behavior -- which is well-developed in the literature in belief-based models of investor behavior -- has the capability of cutting short the performance influence of options.
Our results have practical implications for firms, compensation planners, and employees. Over the last few years, stock options have become a pervasive form of compensation: a majority of U.S. companies issue stock options to employees, and many grant options to more than half of all employees. From the firm’s perspective, exercise behavior affects the costs and benefits of this for compensation, because it affects how long options are held. In particular, options only have an incentive effect as long as they are outstanding. If employees systematically exercise options before expiration, then incentive endure for shorter periods of time than might be suggested by the life of the option. Similarly, if employees exercise options in response to particular price paths, then firms will find that options-based incentives are reduced at times when the market has rewarded the firm’s performance... Employees sacrifice significant economic value when they exercise in response to economically irrelevant factors. (p. 625)
This study uses the most extensive dataset yet available on broad-based stock-option plans in U.S. companies to conduct our analysis. This unique dataset was developed by the National Center for Employee Ownership. (See Weeden, Carberry, and Rodrick 1998: vii and 4-7 for more details and a copy of the survey). A list was constructed of 1360 companies that might have broad-based stock option programs. NCEO defined a broad-based stock option program as those where a majority of full-time employed persons at the company actually receive options over a reasonable period of time. The list included companies that nine major national compensation consulting organizations suspected might have such programs and 385 companies that had made public announcements in the media about the implementation of such programs. These 1360 companies were the population that was sampled. A survey was mailed to each of these companies in early 1998 and 141 responses were received, yielding a response rate of 10.4%. Of these, 105 were confirmed to have broad-based stock option plans that actually made stock option grants to a majority of their full-time employees and had sufficient information to be included in our study. Ninety one percent of the companies in the sample were public; 28% were manufacturers of electronic and measurement equipment, 23.3% were from other manufacturing sectors, 22.5% were providers of business/other services, 10% were communication and transportation companies, 9.3% were finance/real estate companies, and 6.2% belonged to the retail sector. The National Center for Employee Ownership published the book Current Practices in Stock Option Plan Design in 1998 to report on the characteristics of the broad-based stock option plans of these 105 companies. (Weeden, Carberry, and Rodrick 1998). At that time, our group of researchers at Rutgers University requested permission to use the database in order to do an analysis that would focus exclusively on the performance effects of these plans. The research group at Rutgers was not compensated for their work on this project by either the NCEO or the compensation consulting organizations that assisted the NCEO with the original survey. The agreement was that Rutgers University team would work independently in arriving at and publishing our results and make them available in a final report to the organizations that facilitated the initial survey.
The core idea of this research is to compare the performance of corporations with broad-based stock options to corporations without broad-based stock options. All data on company performance was taken from Standard and Poors Compustat datafile of public information on public corporations which is available at Rutgers University. No performance data was supplied in the surveys or by management independent of Compustat. The surveys were only used to assess the presence of broad-based stock option plans in the companies and the percent of non-management employees in the broad-based stock option plans. In order to make this analysis as robust as possible, the researchers also identified an additional group of broad-based stock option companies that had publicly announced their plans but did not participate in the survey. This method expanded the number of broad-based stock option companies considered in the study. It also helps to address any claim that the companies that responded to the survey may have had a unique set of performance results because they chose to respond to the survey. The reasoning is that if the study finds consistent results in the analysis of performance using both groups of broad-based stock option companies, there is a higher probability that it may have actually discovered something useful. Following is a brief description of each group of stock option and non-stock option companies used in the analysis to which this report refers in Table 2 to Table 9. In this report and in these tables the terms stock option and non-stock option companies refer only to broad-based stock option plans. Obviously, most companies have non-broad based plans. The groups of companies with broad-based stock options used are:
These are the 105 corporations who responded to the survey and for whom detailed information is available on their stock option plans. Unlike corporate plans that only include a small number of top executives, the broad-based plans included in this survey actually distributed an average of 45% of recent stock option grants to non-management employees. (see Weeden, Carberry, and Rodrick: 1998 for detailed data.)
These are a subset of 73 corporations who responded to the survey whose broad-based stock option programs include more than 50% of their non-management employees (also referred to in the Tables as 50+% Coverage of Non-Management Employees or Cos. W > 50%).
These are a subset of 32 corporations who responded to the survey whose broad-based stock option programs include less than 50% of their non-management (also referred to in the Tables as < 50+% Coverage of Non-Management Employees or Cos. W < 50%).
These are the 395 broad-based stock option companies that did not respond to the survey but have been publicly identified as having broad-based plans. Because they did not respond to the survey, we do not know the actual percentage of non-management employees in their stock option plans.
These are the 490 corporations that we know from either responses to the survey (105) or publicly available information (395) have broad-based stock option plans (also referred to in the Tables as Stock Option Companies).
In the data analysis that follows, different groups of companies with broad-based stock option plans are compared to several groups of companies without broad-based stock option plans. The groups of companies without broad-based stock options are:
These are the 7165 U.S. public companies in Standard and Poors Compustat datafile of all public companies that we were unable to identify as having broad-based stock options. Firms that reported number of employees in either 1996 or 1997 were included. This group was constructed by taking all of the Standard and Poors Compustat datafile and removing both the 105 companies that responded to the survey and the 385 companies that we identified as having broad-based stock option plans. (also referred to in the Tables as Control Companies or Full or Full Set or All Compustat). Note: A special subset of this group is the Compustat 500 which is the 500 largest Compustat companies by market capitalization.
This group of companies was formed in the following way. For each stock option company, the next smallest and the next largest public company without broad-based stock option plans in its industry group (two digit SIC code) was selected. Sometimes both members of a comparison pair (i.e. two companies) were not available. For example, there were times when the stock option company had no larger company in its industry group to which it could be compared. In such cases, only one company was chosen (i.e. the next smallest). The average performance of the two matched companies was then used as a control measure that could be compared to each stock option company’s performance. (also referred to in the Tables as Control companies, Paired cos. or Paired or their peers or their paired peers)
The purpose of both comparison groups is to fine-tune the analysis. While one can compare the performance of stock option companies to all public non-stock option companies and this analysis does that, we are also persuaded by the argument that it makes sense to compare stock option companies to non-stock option companies that are as similar to them as can be established in sales and industry group. These are the paired companies. They are peers of the broad-based stock option companies except that they do not have broad-based stock options to our knowledge.
The performance measures used include Productivity, measured as Ln(output/employee), Total Shareholder Return, Tobin's q and Return on Assets. Productivity is calculated as the natural logarithm of total sales normalized by the number of employees. Total shareholder return is calculated as (adjusted price + adjusted dividend)/ (adjusted price [t-1]). Adjustments are made for stock splits. The calculation for Tobin's q is: (market value + preferred stock + long term debt)/(capital stock + current assets - current liabilities). Return on assets is calculated as [(income-adjusted depreciation) x 100]/(capital + current assets-current liabilities). All calculations are adjusted for inflation. Labor costs are also examined in this study, however, only a limited number of the firms in our dataset reported such data. Table 1 provides definitions of these measures of performance. For the non-technical reader who wishes to have a detailed walk-through of many aspects of the study and the accompanying charts, the Appendix provides that level of detail.
The performance of broad-based stock option companies is assessed using multiple regression techniques. Influencing both the magnitude of the coefficients and the regression fit will be any extreme values found in the dataset. In order to eliminate the influence of outliers the researchers run the regressions using both robust regression (assigning lower weights to extreme values) and quantile regressions (minimizing the sum of absolute residuals rather than of squared residuals). We also run OLS regressions with the upper and lower 1% values trimmed and the untrimmed dataset. The results did not vary significantly among these techniques and the reported results use robust regression. A specification of the regression models used is available from the authors. For the purposes of this report, we will focus on discussing the statistically significant results. Statistical tables reporting these results are contained in Tables 2- 9. Appendix I contains a detailed guide to making sense of the tables for the non-technical reader. The study is a combination of a cross-sectional study – which looks at portrait of the broad-based stock option versus the non-broad-based stock option companies in 1997 – and a before and after study – which compares the performance of stock option companies to non-stock option companies before broad-based plans were introduced in 1985-1987 and after they were introduced in 1995-1997. The results of the cross-sectional study are reported in Tables 2-5 and 9. The results of the before and after study are reported in Tables 6-8.
It is important to understand the baseline performance of the broad-based stock option companies compared to the non-broad based stock option companies in Compustat in general and their peers. For example, if it is discovered that broad-based stock option companies had 10% greater productivity than non- broad-based stock option companies before the introduction of these plans and 10% greater productivity after the introduction of these plans, it would be clear that the increase after the introduction of broad-based stock options is probably not associated with the introduction of these plans but might be explained by the fact that more productive companies adopt broad-based stock option plans. Some of the data in Tables 6-8 answer this question because these tables focus on the performance of stock option and non-stock option companies in the 1985-1987 period. The researchers choose this period because it is a period before public corporations began to report the introduction of broad-based stock option programs and data on this period represents a fair picture of what these companies were like before the introduction of the programs. These results for 1985-1987 are based on smaller samples than the main results of this study because they were limited to companies that had made data fully available to Compustat in the periods under question. In the interests of drawing fair comparisons, the following comparisons hold constant company size by employment, capital intensivity, and industry group.
Looking at Table 6, in 1985-1987, all broad-based stock option companies had significantly higher productivity levels of 9.3% and , looking at Table 7, they had significantly higher annual productivity growth of 2.2% per year in than all non broad-based stock option companies. If one adjusts for the performance of the control companies , all broad-based stock option companies had significantly higher productivity levels of 9.8% and significantly higher annual productivity growth of 1.8% per year than all non-stock option companies. All stock option companies had significantly higher productivity levels of 5.4% and significantly higher annual productivity growth of 1.8% per year in than their peers (their industry group pairs.) In general, all broad-based stock option companies did not have significantly different levels or growth rates of total shareholder return in 1985-1987 than all non-broad-based stock option companies and their peers, except that they had 4.1% higher total shareholder return levels than all non-broad-based stock option companies. This number is 3.6% if one adjusts for the performance of the control companies.
Using the Tobin’s q measure of market value in 1985-1987, broad-based stock option companies had significantly higher levels of Tobin’s q of .31 and significantly higher annual growth rates in Tobin’s q of 7.5% than all non-broad-based stock option companies in the 1985-1987 period. . If one adjusts for the performance of the control companies, broad-based stock option companies had Tobin’s q levels of .35 and Tobin’s q growth rates of 8.9% more than non-broad-based stock option companies.
In general, broad-based stock option companies did not have significantly different levels or annual growth rates in return on assets than non-broad-based option companies or their peers in the 1985-1987 period, except that they did have a 58.3% higher growth rate in return on assets compared to non- broad-based stock option companies in the 1985-1987 period. This figure is 61.7% greater if one adjusts for the performance of the control companies.
The compensation levels of all stock option companies in the 1985-1987 period were 7.8% higher than all non-stock option companies although the annual growth rate was no different. If one adjusts for the performance of the control companies, the compensation level in 1985-1987 was actually 8% higher.
In conclusion, the companies that implemented broad-based stock option programs in the nineties tended to be those companies that were already more productive, more valuable in terms of Tobin’s q, and higher paying in the mid-eighties, although they were not higher return on asset companies on average. While we did not measure if these were faster growing companies in the mid-eighties, these results certainly do suggest that they were more successful companies in the mid-eighties. This is an important point. Companies that later implemented broad-based plans had already been fairly successful. Now, the key question that remains is how they performed after they introduced the broad-based stock option plans. Was the continuation of this past success merely maintained at previous levels or was it expanded?
We will discuss only the statistically significant results on productivity, total shareholder return, Tobin’s Q, and return on assets separately. Thus, all numbers given in this section can be assumed to be statistically significant at least at the 90% level of probability. (The level of statistical confidence behind each statement can be assessed by examining the Tables. The only exception to this is when we discuss nominal total shareholder returns that may be of interest to investors.) This discussion will summarize all the data contained in Tables 2 to 9. This evaluation of the performance of broad-based stock option companies compared to non-stock option companies examines their performance in three time periods:
(Note: 84% of the survey sample did not adopt their broad-based stock option plan until after 1987).
Broad-based stock option companies will be compared to all non-broad-based stock option public companies and to their industry group peers (pairs). Table 2 provides some simple descriptive statistics on the different company groups. The tests of statistical significance in this table determine if the various groups of broad-based stock option companies are significantly different from all non-broad-based stock option companies. In 1997, all broad-based stock option companies were significantly larger in sales ($3.5 billion versus $1.1 billion) and employment (14,451 workers versus 5,654 workers ) than non-broad-based stock option. The logarithm (Ln in the Table) of sales, employees, and capital intensivity allows a more useful percentage comparison of the two groups of companies. The average sales of all broad-based stock option companies was 169.8% higher than the non-broad-based stock option companies. (i.e. 6.23 – 4.532 or 169.8%) The average employment of the broad-based stock option companies was 146.6% greater that the non-broad-based stock option companies. The average capital intensivity of the broad-based stock option companies was 14.4% higher than the non-broad-based stock option companies. All broad-based stock option companies had significantly more sales ($784. Million more or 36.1% more) than their peers and were more capital intensive with 12.2% greater total assets per employee. But they had similar employment to their peers. Table 2 also demonstrates that the broad-based stock option companies were highly concentrated in manufacturing and services and communications reflecting the general concentration of public companies in those industries. But broad-based stock option companies were less concentrated in mining/construction, whole trade, retail trade, and finance and real estate than most public companies, although significance tests were not performed on these differences.
The productivity evidence is particularly important in this analysis because the productivity measure is one over which individual employees and groups of employees may have some influence as a result of active components such as work practices, their effort, their motivation, their self-and mutual monitoring, their creative ideas and (or) passive components such as their acceptance of and participation in downsizings, reorganizations, restructurings, new technologies, and so forth. In brief, the productivity findings are that stock option companies demonstrated statistically significant higher productivity levels and annual growth rates than non-stock option companies in Compustat in general and among their peers. Now, let’s consider the data in more detail. Those findings that are reported are statistically significant differences unless otherwise noted. Initially, the 1997 levels for broad-based stock option versus non- broad-based stock option companies are examined as noted in Table 3, Simple Performance Comparisons without holding constant employment, capital intensivity, and industry group differences. At the end of the period in which they had broad-based stock option plans, that is 1997, the last year for which data is available, broad-based stock option companies had 31% more productivity than broad-based non-stock option companies. (and 37% more than their paired peers). Surveyed broad-based stock option companies had 16% greater productivity than all non- broad-based stock option companies. And surveyed stock option companies with more than 50% non-management employees receiving grants had 20% more productivity than non-broad-based stock option companies (and 21% more than their paired peers).
Regarding the average annual change in productivity from 1992-1997, broad-based stock option companies had 1% greater average annual productivity than non-broad-based stock option companies. (and 2% more than their paired peers). Surveyed broad-based stock option companies had 1% greater average annual productivity than non-broad-based stock option companies. And surveyed broad-based stock option companies with more than 50% non-management employees receiving grants had 1% greater average annual productivity than non- broad-based stock option companies (but the same annual productivity growth as their paired peers). While these appear to be positive results, it is entirely possible that differences in company size, capital intensivity, and industry group actually have a greater role in accounting for the better performance of the broad-based stock option companies, although this is less likely because the previous comparison also compared the broad-based stock option companies to their peers with similar results. Nevertheless, in order to be more careful about these analyses Table 5 does a more rigorous test.
Table 5 looks more closely at productivity again in 1997 but performs a more rigorous statistical test by holding constant company size according to total employment, capital intensivity, and industry group. This analysis allows a comparison of the productivity effects of like broad-based stock option versus like non broad-based stock option companies. The results are very consistent with those that have already been discussed from Table 3. Broad-based stock option companies had 27.7% more productivity than non-broad-based stock option companies and 30.6% more than their paired peers. The first figure is 27.5% if one adjusts for the performance of the control companies. Surveyed broad-based stock option companies with more than 50% non-management employees receiving grants had 22.0% more productivity than non-broad-based stock option companies (and 21.3% more than their paired peers). . The first figure is 21.7% if one adjusts for the performance of the control companies. Surveyed broad-based stock option companies with less than 50% non-management employees receiving grants had similar productivity to all non-broad-based stock option companies and their paired peers. And the 385 corporations who the press had publicly identified as having broad-based stock option plans -- but were not surveyed and whose percent of non-management employees receiving grants was unknown – had 30.1% greater productivity than non-broad-based stock option companies (34.4% more than their paired peers). The first figure is 27.8% if one adjusts for the performance of the control companies.
This appears to constitute very strong and consistent evidence that stock option companies have higher productivity than non-stock option companies in 1997 after the broad-based plans were introduced. But, remember, it was also noted earlier that stock option companies were already productivity leaders in 1985-1987 before 87% of them introduced broad-based stock option plans. Is the evidence of greater productivity in 1997 simply carrying forward that superiority from the 1985-1987 period or did these companies really improve their productivity after the introduction of the broad-based plans? Certainly, there is a strong clue that the productivity edge is not simply a carry forward because the broad-based stock option companies had 9.3% greater productivity than all non-stock option companies in 1985-1987 (and 5.4% than their paired peers), whereas by 1997, as we see above, the findings of their productivity edge over the non-broad-based stock option companies is consistently in the 20-30% range. Nevertheless, a rigorous test of this clue is to actually compare the performance of broad-based stock option companies to non-broad-based stock option companies before and after they implemented their plans and also look at the within-company changes on a before and after basis.
Tables 6 and 7 examine the change in productivity levels and annual growth rates from the period 1985-1987 -- before the programs were introduced -- to the 1995-1997 period after the programs were introduced. Obviously, this analysis relies on a much smaller sample because the researchers were limited to analyzing firms that had no missing data in Compustat in all years of both periods. Both Tables continue to hold size of company by employment, capital intensivity, and industry group constant. Broad-based stock option companies had 29.4% greater productivity levels in 1995-1997 than non-broad-based stock option companies and the productivity level change for broad-based stock option companies was 14.8% between the two periods. If one adjusts for the performance of the control companies, the broad-based stock option companies still had 24.6% higher productivity levels than the non-broad-based stock option companies. Broad-based stock option companies had 22.2% higher productivity levels than their control companies in 1995-1997 and the productivity level change for the control companies was 16.8% between the two periods. The stock option companies consistently maintained their earlier edge over their peers and over general market companies and expanded this edge significantly between the two periods.
The story was not generally reflected in the results for annual growth in productivity. (Table 7) Broad-based stock option companies had similar annual productivity growth in 1995-1997 than non-broad-based stock option companies and the productivity growth change for all stock option not dissimilar. Broad-based stock option companies had 1.7% higher productivity growth rates than their control companies in 1995-1997 but the productivity annual rate change was not dissimilar between the two periods.
Thus, the leadership appears to be in productivity levels rather than annual productivity growth rates. In order to further check this conclusion, it made sense to go one step further. The above before and after study for broad-based stock option companies assumes that their year of adoption of the broad-based plan was before 1997 (and after 1987) and that their post-adoption period was 1995-1997. Now, the study focused only at those broad-based stock option companies that filled out the survey where we actually know the exact data on which the plan was adopted. These were compared to all non-broad-based stock option companies for which data was available over the entire period and all paired peers. This is called the "within-company change following adoption" study and is shown at the bottom of Tables 7 and 8 in lines 8-10. The result is that broad-based stock option companies had 6.3% higher productivity levels pre-adoption than non- broad-based stock option companies and they had 14% higher productivity levels post adoption than non-broad-based stock option companies. The difference of 7.7% is statistically significant. Broad-based stock option companies had 2.29% higher annual productivity growth rates before adoption but their post-adoption growth rates were 2.3% lower and the –5.2% difference was statistically significant. These findings now suggest that broad-based stock option companies did increase their productivity levels although not their rates after adoption. Note that the sample sizes are very small with this comparison.
In conclusion, these findings establish that companies with broad-based stock options had significantly higher productivity levels than non-broad-based stock option companies and their peers whether one compares their situations in 1997 or considers 1992-1997 average annual changes or considers an analysis based on measuring productivity before broad-based stock options were implemented in 1985-1987 and after they were implemented in 1995-1997. But the annual rates of productivity growth were no different post-adoption for broad-based stock option companies, while they were significantly reduced for a small sample broad-based stock option companies whose actual data of adoption was known.
How should the productivity evidence be interpreted? It is important not to view the productivity evidence in a simplistic fashion as suggesting that workers just worked harder once their companies announced stock options. Productivity increases could be a result of a the active involvement of workers in increasing effort, working smarter, working in redesigned or reengineered work structures, participating in various productivity-increasing employee involvement or team approaches that enhance self-and mutual monitoring.. Or they could be the result of company changes that increased productivity because employees offered or agreed to live with specific creative ideas that originated with the management or the employees. In addition, productivity increases could be the result of passive components such as workers’ acceptance of downsizings, reorganizations, restructurings, new technologies, and other major changes in firm organization that might increase sales per worker by increasing sales with a constant or decreasing base of workers or by decreasing workers and holding sales fairly constant or by increasing sales and workers but doing this with a smaller proportion of workers to sales than in the past. Moreover, a variety of all the above-mentioned components could account for the productivity increases. Or different components could account for productivity increases in different companies. Obviously, it was not possible to measure the possible answers to this question. This perspective does not underplay the importance of the productivity evidence, but it should serve as a warning against facile formulas to explain it.
The total shareholder return evidence is particularly important in assessing the performance of broad-based stock option plans because of persistent concerns by institutional and other shareholders that these plans may not be paying for themselves over time. In brief, when all the findings are taken together, the total shareholder return findings are that over the 1992-1997 period broad-based stock option companies perform as well as non-stock option companies in Compustat in general and among their peers and sometimes exceed the total shareholder returns of these comparison groups. Those findings that are reported are statistically significant differences unless otherwise noted. The analysis will illustrate how different readers could use these data to paint very positive or very negative pictures of the findings depending on the specific time period that they examine. We shall make the case for what we consider to be the empirically correct conclusion based on all the available evidence by methodically going through six different ways of approaching this evidence that was available in this study.
Now, let us consider the data in more detail. Note that as we move through the discussion certain issues regarding the methodology will become very relevant. We will examine the results in several time periods using several methods: (1) total shareholder return in the single year 1997, the last one for which we have data; (2) the average annual change in total shareholder return from 1992-1997; (3) total shareholder return before broad-based stock options were implemented in 1985-1987 and after they were implemented in 1995-1997; (4) total shareholder returns in each individual year from 1992-1997; (5) a comparison of the total shareholder returns of all broad-based stock option companies to all non- broad-based stock option companies controlling for industry group, size, and capital intensivity in all years from 1992-1997, and, finally (6) cumulative total shareholder return from 1992-1997.
First, let’s examine the 1997 levels for broad-based stock option versus non-broad-based stock option companies as noted in Table 3, Simple Performance Comparisons without holding constant employment, capital intensivity, and industry group differences. At the end of the period in which they had broad-based stock option plans, that is 1997, the last year for which data is available, broad-based stock option companies had 5.39% higher total shareholder return than non-broad-based stock option companies. (but -7.18% lower than their paired peers). Surveyed broad-based stock option companies had 2.79% higher total shareholder return than non-broad-based stock option companies. The total shareholder return of surveyed broad-based stock option companies with more than 50% non-management employees receiving grants was not significantly different than non-broad-based stock option or their paired peers.
Table 5 looks more closely at total shareholder return in the year 1997 but performs a more rigorous statistical test by controlling for company size according to total employment, capital intensivity, and industry group. This analysis allows us to compare the total shareholder return effects of like broad-based stock option versus like non-broad-based stock option companies. The results are very consistent with those that have already been discussed. Broad-based stock option companies had –3.44% worse total shareholder returns than non-broad-based stock option companies and -6.43% worse returns than their paired peers. The figure for broad-based stock option companies is –6.77% if one adjusts for the performance of the control companies. Surveyed broad-based stock option companies with more than 50% non-management employees receiving grants had -11.92% worse total shareholder returns in 1997 than all non-broad-based stock option companies but similar returns to their paired peers. The figure for surveyed broad-based stock option companies with more than 50% non-management employees receiving grants is -15.27% if one adjusts for the performance of the control companies. Surveyed broad-based stock option companies with less than 50% non-management employees receiving grants had similar total shareholder returns to all non-broad-based stock option companies and their paired peers. And the 385 corporations that the press had publicly identified as having broad-based stock option plans and were not surveyed -- referred to here as unknown coverage of non-management (i.e. whose percent of non-management employees receiving grants was unknown) -- had similar total shareholder returns to all non-stock option companies but –7.56% worse returns their paired peers.
These data for 1997 initially appear to constitute negative to mixed evidence about the impact of broad-based stock option plans on total shareholder returns in the single year 1997 after the broad-based plans were introduced. However, the analysis does stop here. Several more levels of analysis are necessary before arriving at a firm conclusion. The year 1997 is just a single year and perhaps it was a bad year for stock option companies. Additionally, these data are based on robust regressions that adjust for outliers, namely, companies with very high and very low total shareholder returns. This is a standard approach in careful statistical analysis. In this case, however, these data do not reflect the actual experience of investor shareholders during these years. Because investors and shareholders are specifically interested in achieving outlier returns, this may not be the best way to approach this question. Later, in the analysis, the available Compustat data on all the companies in this analysis will be re-analyzed without excluding outliers.
Second, in order to evaluate whether the results for 1997 make sense, let’s look at more years and examine the average annual change in total shareholder return from 1992-1997. These figures are shown at the bottom of Table 3. It initially appears form these data that broad-based stock option companies had -2.0% worse average annual total shareholder return change than all non-broad-based stock option companies. (and -6.16% worse than their paired peers). Surveyed broad-based stock option companies did not have different shareholder returns from all non-broad-based stock option companies. Surveyed broad-based stock option companies with more than 50% non-management employees receiving options were not dissimilar from all non- broad-based stock option companies. However, they had –9.80% worse average annual change in total shareholder return respectively from their paired peers. These data continue to be based on robust regressions that adjust for outliers – companies with very high and very low total shareholder returns – and therefore still do not reflect the actual experience of investor shareholders during these years. They may or may not reflect the actual experience of investors in these companies and the actual impact of broad-based stock option plans.
Third, we will now examine total shareholder return before and after the introduction of the broad-based stock option plans. Tables 6 and 7 examine the change in total shareholder return levels and total shareholder return annual growth rates from the period 1985-1987 -- before the programs were introduced -- to the 1995-1997 period after the programs were introduced. Obviously, this analysis relies on a much smaller sample because we were limited to analyzing firms that had no missing data in Compustat in all years of both periods. Moreover, in both Tables 6 and 7, we continue to control for the size of the company by employment, capital intensivity, and industry group. The results of this analysis indicate that between the periods 1985-1987 to 1995-1997 broad-based stock option companies did not significantly differ from non-broad-based stock option companies in their total shareholder return change. And broad-based stock option companies did not differ significantly from their paired peers in their total shareholder return change from one period to the next. The story was similar for annual growth in total shareholder return. The broad-based stock option companies and the non-broad-based stock option companies did not significantly differ in how their total shareholder return levels and annual growth changed between the two periods.
In order to further check this conclusion, we went one step further. For the purpose of the previous analysis, the before and after study for all stock option companies assumes that the year of adoption of the broad-based stock option plans was after 1985-87 and that the post-adoption period for these broad-based plans was 1995-1997. This assumption made sense because we know that 87% of the surveyed broad-based stock option companies introduced their plans after 1985-1987 and we can reasonably assume that this was true for all broad-based stock option companies. For the next analysis, we looked only at those broad-based stock option companies that filled out the survey where we actually know the exact date on which the plan was adopted. These were compared to all non-broad-based stock option companies for which data was available over the entire period and all paired peers. The result is that there is no significant difference in total shareholder return pre-adoption and post-adoption. These findings now suggest that broad-based stock option companies, which implemented plans that should have been dilutive, did not appear to have any statistically significant dilution to shareholders post-adoption when the 1995-1997 period is considered as the post-adoption period. For this last analysis, the sample sizes are extremely small with 12-15 companies. However, both of these analyses are still based on robust regressions that adjust for outliers and they employ smaller samples because of the necessity of having data for both periods. The analysis now moves to an examination of all the total shareholder return data that is publicly-available in Compustat without adjusting for outliers.
Fourth, we now examine actual total shareholder returns for the individual years 1992-1997 in order to begin resolve the question definitively. These observations do not adjust for outliers and are based on actual total shareholder return data from Compustat. Table 4 applies two different methods. In the top of the table, we use all available Compustat data to compute the returns for all companies that reported data in any individual year. In the bottom of Table 4, we use all available Compustat data for all companies that reported data in every year over teh entire 1992-1997 period. Asterisks in the table indicate where the broad-based stock option companies differ significantly from the non- broad-based stock option companies. Let’s consider the results of the two parts of the table separately.
When one examines total shareholder returns for 1992-1997 based on all companies that report in any individual year (the top part of the table), the data indicates that the total shareholder returns of different groups of broad-based stock option companies -- all broad-based stock option companies, those with more than 50% non-management coverage, and those with less than 50% of non-management coverage – always and in every year was not significantly different from or significantly surpassed the total shareholder return of all non-(broad-based) stock option companies. Broad-based stock option companies statistically significantly surpassed the average returns of non-broad-based stock option companies in 1994 by 10.0% (column 3) to –4.5% (column 1) and in 1995 by 51.4% (column 3) to 31.8% (column 1) And broad-based stock option companies with more than 50% non-managemen