Our people get profit-sharing checks. I got a report the other day that says that 84 percent of our people participate in our stock purchase program, where they can buy stock at a 15 percent discount.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Where we're living we have a certain amount of our profit every year it's like a percentage 5 or 7% or something like that that we set aside specifically for charity things.
From the business point of view, always encouraging the people in our company to own stock in the company, and if we're going to build something great, to have a lot of people share in the benefits of that greatness.
Many follow a rule of thumb - no more than 5% in one stock. But that's not the entrepreneurial road to riches.
Most people sell stock to pay taxes, but I didn't want to sell any stock.
I have never owned a share of stock in my life, and the only time I've double dipped into anything is at the snack tray.
Publicly traded United States companies report sales and profits to investors every quarter.
I helped start a ceramics company called CPS Technologies. We took it public in 1987 at $12 a share. Three months later, there was this horrible cliff: Black Monday. Fidelity had bought 15 percent of our stock, and their algorithm caused them to dump it all onto the market that day. We dropped from $12 to $2.
If I ever took a business public, I wouldn't want to take the shares off the table. I don't want people thinking I'm doing it just to make money and then going to run for the hills. I think that's a very important distinction.
Although it's easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket... it's part-ownership of a business.
One hundred percent of our earnings are reinvested in the company, and a great deal of that goes to research.