STOCK-BASED COMPENSATION

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2013

STOCK-BASED COMPENSATION

STOCK-BASED COMPENSATION

8. STOCK-BASED COMPENSATION

        On March 4, 2013, the Company's Board of Directors approved the Company's 2013 Equity Incentive Plan, which was approved by the Company's stockholders on April 30, 2013 at the 2013 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. The Plan provides for the grant of a variety of forms of awards to acquire up to an aggregate of 2.5 million shares of common stock. The Compensation Committee of the Board has approved an initial round of awards to the Company's employees in the form of restricted stock units ("RSUs") to acquire up to 2.0 million shares of common stock. Such awards will entitle the grantees to receive shares of common stock, at no cost, upon the satisfaction of 2013, 2014 and 2015 performance-based vesting conditions and will become exercisable on a staggered basis over a period of four years from grant. Performance criteria are to be set by the Board of Directors for each of 2013, 2014 and 2015. The grant date for each sub tranche of the awards will be the date when performance criteria for the relevant year are set and communicated to employees.

        Exercise is also subject to the condition that the closing price of the Company's common stock has exceeded $12.00 per share on at least ten trading days prior to exercise; this condition has been satisfied. As a condition to the receipt of an award under the Plan, any employee that held an outstanding option award under the Company's 2009 Equity Incentive Plan was required to forfeit the unvested portion of such award; the vested portion of outstanding option awards remained unaffected by the new program.

        The Company's Board of Directors approved performance criteria for the 2013 sub-tranche in respect of 637,800 RSUs with a weighted average per unit grant date fair value of $10.53. In the three and nine months ended September 30, 2013, the Company recognized $1.0 million and $2.2 million, respectively, of expense attributable to these RSUs. The Company estimates that the total compensation expense related to awards approved under the Plan not yet recognized as of September 30, 2013 approximates $18.4 million, which is expected to be expensed over a weighted average period of 3.5 years. The Company expects to settle employee RSU exercises out of treasury stock.