Gee anyone take a look at the stock float of BIG companies?
In the same way that different levels of dilution are acceptable at different stages of a company's growth, there are also different ways of making money at different stages of a company's development from start-up (PS/cash flow) to growth (PS/cash flow/PE) to maturity (PE/dividends).
During IDCC's turnaround stage (1999-2003), for example, most of the people here just loaded up on the stock and options anytime this stock got to the $5-$10 range imply because the risks and rewards were outstanding especially if you were paying attention to the monetization of the patent portfolio.
Anyway, for some perspective here's a comparison of the royalties generated by IBM, QCOM and IDCC from 1992 to 2002. IBM is, obviously, the most successful licensor in history. QCOM is probably going to catch up with IBM in the next five years.
Before the 2003 settlement IDCC already stood out in terms of IP efficiency as measured by cumulative royalties per share! We also know that more royalties are potentially going to come in the next 4 years than the previous 22 years.
Note that it took IBM 5 years to reach the $400M milestone after exceeding the $100M milestone. It took QCOM 4 years to exceed the $400M milestone after exceeding the $100M milestone.
10-Year ROYALTIES IBM vs QCOM vs IDCC 1992 to 2002 . . IBM QCOM IDCC . . 1988 ~$ 30M 1989 170M 1999 180M 1991 220M . . 1992 ~$ 250M $ 10M $ 3M 1993 400M 16M 0M 1994 500M 29M 29M 1995 600M 45M 68M 1996 850M 100M 29M 1997 1.0B 152M 6M 1998 1.1B 218M 92M 1999 1.3B 454M 66M 2000 1.5B 705M* 51M* 2001 1.4B 777M 53M 2002 1.3B 851M 88M . Total ~$10.2B $ 3.4B $ 485M . Diluted O/S(2002) 1.73B 809M 56M . Cumulative Royalties Per Share 1992-2002 $5.90/share $4.20/share $ 8.66/share . No. of Patents (FY2002) ~24,000 (Global) 900 (US) 240 (US) . . Note: QCOM and IDCC numbers were extracted from 10Ks. IBM only started to break out its royalties numbers this year so its historical numbers were culled from different sources including CHI Research and SSB. . *SAB 101 transition . . Note again: Royalties usually have gross margins of 90%.