STOCK COMPENSATION PLANS |
9 Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sep. 30, 2019 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Share-based Payment Arrangement [Abstract] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stock Compensation Plans |
NOTE 9 - STOCK COMPENSATION PLANS
Employees’ Plans
On February 19, 2019, the Compensation Committee approved grants under the A&R 2015 Equity Plan to certain officers and employees for the 2019 to 2021 performance period. Shares granted under the awards consisted of 0.6 million restricted stock units and 0.6 million performance shares.
Restricted stock units granted during 2019 are subject to continued employment, are retention based and are payable in common shares. The outstanding restricted stock units that were granted in 2019 cliff vest on December 31, 2021.
Performance shares are subject to continued employment, and each performance share, if earned, entitles the holder to be paid out in common shares. Performance is measured on the basis of relative TSR for the period of January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2021 and measured against the constituents of the SPDR S&P Metals and Mining ETF Index at the beginning of the relevant performance period. The final payouts for the outstanding performance period grants will vary from zero to 200% of the original grant depending on whether and to what extent the Company achieves certain objectives and performance goals as established by the Compensation Committee.
Determination of Fair Value
The fair value of each performance share grant is estimated on the date of grant using a Monte Carlo simulation to forecast relative TSR performance. A correlation matrix of historical and projected share prices was developed for both the Company and our predetermined peer group of mining and metals companies. The fair value assumes that the objective will be achieved.
The expected term of the grant represents the time from the grant date to the end of the service period. We estimate the volatility of our common shares and that of the peer group using daily price intervals for all companies. The risk-free interest rate is the rate at the grant date on zero-coupon government bonds with a term commensurate with the remaining life of the performance period.
The following assumptions were utilized to estimate the fair value for the 2019 performance share grant:
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