money.cnn.com/2005/05/03/technology/microsoft_options.reut -> money.cnn.com/2005/05/03/technology/microsoft_options.reut/
Research) said in 2003 it would stop granting stock op tions and began accounting for prior grants as an expense to better refl ect the cost of employee compensation for shareholders. The move marked a departure from established practice for technology comp anies and came ahead of a pending change in accounting standards that wi ll force US corporations to treat options as an expense. "We're definitely a lot more sophisticated about a lot of the things that we do," Gates said at a meeting of the Society of American Business Edi tors and Writers. "I regret that we ever used stock options," he added, without elaborating . Gates, who credits his friendship with fellow billionaire Warren Buffett for changing his view of stock options, said he had just returned from a meeting with Buffett, a long-time advocate of more transparent stock op tion accounting. Gates pointed to some evidence of continued overvaluation among technolog y stocks, even though the market overall had corrected sharply from 1999 , when Microsoft's stock was trading at more than twice its current leve l "I would say that there's as much overvaluation today as there is underva luation," said Gates, while cautioning that "any statement about stock p rices is always suspect." "We're not where we were in '99, but in no way would I say we'd swung in the other direction to a reasonable degree," he added. Asked whether he thought Microsoft had matured from its fast-growth days, Gates pointed to the company's nearly $7 billion research budget, inclu ding bets on theoretical breakthrough technology in quantum computing. "We're as big a change agent as any corporation ever has been," he said. Microsoft became a symbol for the riches spun off during the boom years f or technology investment in the 1980s and early 1990s through employee s tock options. But since peaking just shy of the split-adjusted price of $60 at the end of 1999, shares have since traded in a range of about $24 to $30 during the past two years. With the launch of Windows 95 a decade ago, Microsoft touched off a stock rally that minted in-house millionaires up through the collapse of the tech bubble in early 2000.
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