Dr Thanks for your note to our CEO, Terry Barr, regarding the LTIP proposal before our shareholders. Terry has asked me to respond to you on his behalf.
We are currently looking to provide some supplementary details to the shareholders. To do so, we expect to publish a “plain English” letter that would be made available to all shareholders to consider ahead of the General Meeting.
Despite perceptions to the contrary, the LTIP is always based on meeting a set of performance targets. In 2011, those targets were solely related to the share price performance, which was up 57% during that calendar year. For the first half of 2012, the Board adopted a broader set of targets, including but not limited to reserves growth, production growth and share price performance.
The details of these current performance measures, which are separately established by the Board for different performance periods to create appropriate and timely incentives for LTIP participants, were not included in the Notice of Meeting documents distributed for several reasons. First, these goals might give Samson’s competitors and vendors substantive knowledge about Samson’s future direction and plans, including confidential or proprietary information, that could negatively affect the Company . Also, investors can interpret performance goals included in employee incentive programs as projections of future company performance, which are frowned upon by the SEC unless they are acknowledged to be projections and are then accompanied by necessary disclaimers and appropriate cautionary statements.
We are currently drafting a suitable “plain English” document for review and approval by the Samson Board before release.
Erin Cherrington
PR/IR Coordinator & Executive Assistant
1331 17th Street, Suite 710
Denver, CO 80202
Office: (303) 295-0344
Direct: (303) 298-0369
Fax: (303) 295-1961
SSN Price at posting:
9.4¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held