OMB APPROVAL | ||||
OMB Number: | 3235-0059 | |||
Expires: | January 31, 2008 | |||
Estimated average burden hours per response |
14. |
UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
SCHEDULE 14A
Proxy Statement Pursuant to Section 14(a) of the Securities
Exchange Act of 1934 (Amendment No. )
Filed by the Registrant þ | |
Filed by a Party other than the Registrant o | |
Check the appropriate box: |
o Preliminary Proxy Statement | |
o Confidential, for Use of the Commission Only (as permitted by Rule 14a-6(e)(2)) | |
o Definitive Proxy Statement | |
þ Definitive Additional Materials | |
o Soliciting Material Pursuant to §240.14a-12 |
Range Resources Corporation
Payment of Filing Fee (Check the appropriate box):
þ No fee required. | |
o Fee computed on table below per Exchange Act Rules 14a-6(i)(1) and 0-11. |
1) Title of each class of securities to which transaction applies: |
2) Aggregate number of securities to which transaction applies: |
3) Per unit price or other underlying value of transaction computed pursuant to Exchange Act Rule 0-11 (set forth the amount on which the filing fee is calculated and state how it was determined): |
4) Proposed maximum aggregate value of transaction: |
5) Total fee paid: |
o Fee paid previously with preliminary materials. |
o Check box if any part of the fee is offset as provided by Exchange Act Rule 0-11(a)(2) and identify the filing for which the offsetting fee was paid previously. Identify the previous filing by registration statement number, or the Form or Schedule and the date of its filing. |
1) Amount Previously Paid: |
2) Form, Schedule or Registration Statement No.: |
3) Filing Party: |
4) Date Filed: |
SEC 1913 (04-05) | Persons who are to respond to the collection of information contained in this form are not required to respond unless the form displays a currently valid OMB control number. |
TO:
|
Range Stockholders | |
FROM:
|
Rodney L. Waller on behalf of the Company | |
DATE:
|
May 18, 2007 | |
RE:
|
Range Resources Proxy Proposals for 2007 |
| Ranges practice since adoption of the plan has been to issue stock-settled SARs to reduce dilution to our stockholders. Range believes that equity compensation is critical to attracting |
and retaining a first class organization. We believe the facts show this to be true but we want to reduce as much as possible the dilution to existing shareholders. The Plan allows the Compensation Committee the flexibility to structure various equity awards, although the Company has only issued stock-settled SARs since its adoption in 2005. We sacrificed the favorable tax treatment of ISOs for our employees in order to reduce the dilution to the stockholders. | |||
| ISS views the flexibility to be a threat to the stockholders and therefore in their valuation of the cost to the stockholders consider all possible future awards to be Restricted Stock Awards which would be the most expensive form of equity awards under the Plan. The Company has never issued a Restricted Stock Award under the Plan since the Plan was in existence. ISS acknowledges Ranges superior performance in the stock market but does not believe that superior performing companies can be trusted to administer their compensation practices in a similar superior manner. | ||
| Even using the most expensive valuation for the cost of the stockholders, the ISS computation shows a 7% cost compared to their 6% cap. We have pointed out to ISS two fundamental differences with their computation, which if changed, would actually put Range within their 6% cap tolerance. We will discuss those two specific differences later. |
| When a stock option is issued, in order to capture the appreciation, the total number of shares under the grant has to be issued; thereby creating the maximum dilution to stockholders even if the appreciation being captured is nominal. | ||
| When a SAR is issued, the appreciation over the grant price is paid in stock at the rate of the appreciated value of the common stock in excess of the grant price. This delivers a significantly lower dilution to stockholders while capturing the appreciation for the employee. Range has gone one step further and settled all the payroll and withholding taxes of the exercise in cash rather than in common stock that would have to be immediately sold to satisfy the tax liability. This reduces the dilution by at least another 26% (Medicare 1.45% and federal withholding of 25% plus Social Security taxes if applicable). | ||
| For example, if 100,000 stock options were granted at $30 per share (the fair market value of the common stock on the date of the grant), the full 100,000 shares would have to issued and sold to capture $10 per share appreciation in the common stock to $40 per share. If the same award was a SAR, the number of shares issued would be 25,000 shares and then with the cash settlement on the payroll taxes only 18,500 shares would be issued under Ranges methodology. In this example, the use of SARs reduced the dilution by 81.5%. | ||
| In fact, if you do the math in our example above, if the common stock moved from $30 to $60 per share, the number of shares of common stock that would be issued would be 50,000 shares (37,000 shares with cash settlement of the payroll taxes). In order for there to be issued 100,000 shares of common stock under a SAR arrangement granted at $30 per share, the |
common stock would have to appreciate 2 million times to $60 million per share since the appreciation is always paid in appreciated valued common stock. | |||
| This example begs the question, how can ISS value SARs at the same cost of a stock option and how can ISS count SAR awards as the same number of option awards for the burn rate when the number of SARs issued is always lower than the granted number of SARs? | ||
| This situation is further aggravated by the ISS methodology that dictates that a Company can not count the number of SARs unused upon exercise as a reduction to the number of SARs granted during the year for the burn rate calculation. In 2006, Range employees exercised 126,509 SAR awards and, with the cash settlement of payroll taxes, Range actually issued 31,436 common shares. This was over a 75% reduction in dilution to the stockholders. | ||
| I can certainly understand that ISS would want to count all the SARs as full awards when granted, since no one can anticipate the number of actual awards upon exercise. However, never to reconcile back to the actual number of awards issued seems overly conservative. With Ranges cash settlement of payroll taxes, the common stock on the date of grant would have to more than triple before the number of shares issued upon the exercise of the award would equal 50% of the number of the SARs granted. Therefore, ISSs practice of counting the number of SAR awards one-for-one in determining the burn rate is (i) illogical, (ii) distorts any comparison to any other companies, and (iii) overstates the dilution to the stockholder being reflected in the financial statements. |
| Values all future awards as if they were full value stock awards although the only awards ever granted under the 2005 Plan have been SARs since 2005. This is a worst case scenario. | ||
| For the first time, ISS has chosen to include in existing granted awards 501,511 unvested restricted stock awards in the computation, even though the cost of such shares were valued when they were originally granted in prior years. ISS also shows the 501,511 shares added to the current outstanding shares to determine fully diluted shares, which is in error because the shares are already issued and included in the current outstanding shares prior to such addition. | ||
| The value assigned to the existing granted options and SARs is significantly overstated due to the award value not considering the exercise prices of the awards, thereby valuing the issued awards greater than the future full value awards and the valuing of options and SARs the same . Option and SARs have significantly different costs to the stockholders. | ||
| The weighted average exercise price of all existing options and SARs as of March 31, 2007 is $15.06 as shown on page 8 of the Proxy. If ISS valued each of those awards at $14.79 in their model, the total value of those awards would be $29.85 per share or $3.53 per share greater than the full value awards. Remember, this number is multiplied by the absolute number of SARs granted even though the number of common shares issued pursuant to SARs is always less than the grant amount. | ||
| ISS valued the future awards at 200-day average price of $26.32 per share. If the $26.32 amount was used as the fair market value, the number of common shares that would be issued underlying the 3,988,764 SARs outstanding as of March 31, 2007 would be 520,365 shares of common stock. The SEC requires in the beneficial ownership table in the Proxy that only the net amounts issuable under the SARs be included, rather than the absolute number of the SARs, which obviously would be significantly overstated. |
| Used as common stock outstanding for the calculation the amount of outstanding stock less the amount held in the deferred compensation plan rabbi trust. This excluded 1.9 million shares in 2006, 2.0 million shares in 2005 and 2.2 million shares in 2004. This treatment is inconsistent with ISSs burn rate calculation in which stock awards are multiplied by 2 in determining the number of awards given during the year. However, when comparing the total number of SARs and stock awards (multiplied by 2) to the number of outstanding shares, ISS has excluded all of the stock awards ever granted. All of Ranges stock awards are made to the deferred compensation plan. | ||
| Range in 2005 announced that it intended to repurchase shares for stock awards in order to reduce dilution for that year due to the uncertainties of the new accounting rules under FAS 123R. This resulted in no dilution to the stockholders but ISS has counted the 192,500 shares granted in 2005 from treasury stock anyway and then multiplied it by 2. | ||
| ISS does not allow the number of unused awards under SARs to be used to reduce the number of SAR awards for the current period. ISS counts all the SAR awards on an absolute basis, when in reality the underlying common shares are never issued. On one hand ISS uses a multiplier of 2 for stock awards to denote a greater significance of the stock award grant but does not use a deflator for the use of SARs as compared to options. |