Via Techcrunch
The entire stock market is taking another drubbing today, and Google is no exception. Its shares tried to rally in the morning, but are now trading below the $329 they closed at yesterday. That’s a key price level Google employees are watching because a huge chunk of their options (1.7 million across the company) were granted with a weighted average exercise price of $329.78. The options are worthless under that price. In addition to that, there are another 5.7 million options that were granted at weighted average exercise prices of $450 and above. (see table below). All told, 61 percent of Google’s stock options granted to employees are currently under water.
The rest of Google’s stock options become worthless at the average exercise prices of $275, $177, and $21 (for pre-IPO employees, who don’t have much to worry about). All of these numbers com from Google’s second quarter 10-Q and don’t reflect any options that may have been granted in the third quarter. (Google’s third-quarter earnings announcement is next week).
Only eight days ago Google’s shares were trading at $411 and three months ago they were above $450. In that time, a lot of paper wealth has disappeared and along with it incentive for many recent hires to stay.