how to boost shareholder confidence in lynas, page-9

Jukie

It is accepted practice in most companies that staff get special discounts for the products their companies are involved in. And this extends to non listed comapnies as well. It is expected that you pay wholesale prices or get a discount in whatever your company does. Imagine flying for 10% or free rail trips.
Lynas staff are no doubt rubbing their hands in glee being able to buy lumps of processed or unprocessed piles of rock at a hefty discount.


Qantas, Harvey Norman, Coles, Macquarie Group or for that matter I would imagine most of the listed companies on our market and likely around the world - staff get an offer of discounted shares, often as part of their package. In many cases they have to pay for the conversion of these staff shares or to convert their options and have restricted trading windows of time placed on them. So Lynas is not doing anything that most companies are doing and you as a shareholder get your vote and chance to disagree with these distributions each year if you want to.

While directors and managers often get large chunks it also means that this would dominate a portfolio and leave little room for buying more additional shares even if they wanted to.

You are lucky that you can choose which shares you buy with your after tax $ - imagine if a large chunk had to be devoted to paying the balance of the money owing on your company shares, or you had no interest in buying shares at all? And they are not always profitable (some got exercised at $1.02 recently).

Of the current options outstanding for Lynas many are exercisable at prices way above the current market price (as high as $2.36!) and only about 1/3rd are in the money (mostly at $0.66c).

So Jukie there are unlimited precedents in place for discounted shares and hopefully us poor shareholders may have our chance to top up with a share purchase plan some time in the future - unless you fancy your chances of getting a job at Lynas.