Q because that was all now in the P&L, you had to expense that like cash, which Warren Buffett and many others had been pushing for since 97, 98. But in order to get around that, Everybody started adjusting what they, you know, their, their earnings, EBITDA, they started adjusting the stock-based compensation expense out of EBITDA, ok, so as though the expense no longer counted. Um, did you start that?
A I don't know that I started it, but we did. So we did do the proforming, but the reason that we did the proforming wasn't because we didn't view that every single dollar of RSUs that we were handing out had real, very significant value. It was more that we were going through this transition period where Some of the compensation we had handed out historically was, were stock options, and now we were moving to a world of, of RSUs. So there was a multi-year period where some of the stock-based compensation was option-based, some of the stock-based compensation was RSU-based. So that would have created even more confusion around, you know, what, how to, how to think about core earnings. Um, and so we did pro forma them and, you know, obviously almost all companies pro forma them. Um, I think the big difference is, is that we as, as a company, we always viewed one dollar of, of an RSU as fully being worth one dollar. In fact, if you really are bullish on your company, which we were, We viewed that a dollar of RSUs was actually worth more than a dollar because we certainly had a view, hopefully, that if we did our jobs, that, that the stock was going to go up. And so that the, it's, it was our most valuable form of currency that we use to pay, uh, employees. Um, and we certainly thought about that all along the way. We never, it never occurred to us That, that it shouldn't count or t…
AI assessment note: “I don't know that I started it, but we did.”