Data: as you stated, "there were a few hungry hogs at Harry's trough".
Here are some more statistics showing that the stock buy back's primary accomplishment was to offset the options and the RS/RSUs granted to management.
The amounts you posted from Ron's analysis was thru 2009. Since then there has been additional purchases. According to the last 10-Q, as of 9/30/2013 there was 28,409 million shares of common held as treasury stock, that was purchased at a cost of $721,9 million.
As of 12/31/1995, there were 44.424 million shares outstanding. In 1996, IDCC issued approximately 1.5 million shares related to a merger with Patents Corp. In addition, there were outstanding warrants for approximately 3.0 million shares. Therefore, maximum outstanding shares should have been 48.924 million (44.424 + 1.5 + 3.0). After reducing this total by the 28,409 million shares that were purchased by buybacks and held as treasury stocks, the outstanding shares as of 9/30/2013 should have been 20,515 million. Instead, there were 41,187 shares outstanding as of 9/30/2013, The difference (20,672 million ) indicating the extent of stock awards to management.(Note: There were some relatively minor amounts of stock issued under employee stock purchase and profit sharing plans, and in the conversion of preferred shares)
It should be noted the the recent use of RSU’s instead of options has significantly reduced the number of shares issued. The following statement from the 1998 10-K, gives some idea about how options were previously handed out.
12. COMMON STOCK OPTION PLANS AND WARRANTS:
Common Stock Option Plans
InterDigital has granted options under two incentive stock option plans, four non-qualified stock option plans and one plan which provides for grants of both incentive and non-qualified stock options for officers and employees of InterDigital and others. One incentive stock option plan, three non-qualified stock option plans and the plan that allows for both incentive and non-qualified stock options are authorized to grant options for up to 600,000, 2,035,600, 1,500,000, 2,000,000 and 4,000,000 shares, respectively of InterDigital's Common Stock.
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