I don't understand the shock at the stock-based comp expense. Surely a couple of million is a drop in the ocean. What have I missed?
And the way I understand it, they took a one time charge during this year for all stock based compensation ever. So it's really all stock based compensation ever.
They did not hand out $2.2bn in stock in 6 months.
https://www.recode.net/2017/2/2/14465646/evan-spiegel-snap-i...
$1.99 billion in stock-based compensation was recognized in the first 3 months of the year.
$637 million of that was given to the CEO according to his October 2016 employment contract, which all vested at IPO in March 2017.
Then there's the pre-IPO employee RSUs. Those typically are subject to 4 years of time vesting, as well as a performance requirement that triggered when the company IPOed.
$1.3 billion of those were recognized as of March 31 2017 because they met their performance vesting requirement (IPO-ing). Those were probably the shares that had already satisfied the time-vesting requirement.
The company still hasn't recognized an additional $1.3 billion in stock-based compensation that will be recognized on its financial statements over a weighted-average period of the next 3.1 years. Those were probably issued relatively recently since they haven't met their time vesting requirement yet.