Intel Corp (INTC)

[Elmer Phud]

Dew -

Elmer: you are totally missing the point. Any cash spent buying shares on the open market to try to offset options dilution is REAL MONEY out the door that does not get expensed under GAAP. Cash so spent is not available for dividends, capital investments, or any other corporate purposes – it is gone.

So what? Companies buy back their shares all the time, especially when they are cheap. It may be money that's gone, temporarily but it raises the value of the other outstanding shares, so it didn't go for nothing.

If you evaluate a company’s financial condition over time based on a FIXED NUMBER OF SHARES OUTSTANDING (which assures an apples-to-apples comparison between different time periods), you must incorporate into your analysis the cash outlays needed to keep the share count fixed.

So then evaluate a company’s financial condition over time based on the NUMBER OF SHARES OUTSTANDING.