[cperciva]

281M of stock-based compensation ... ended the quarter with about $100 million more cash than they started with.

This looks like a loss to me. They could have sold $281M of stock and gotten $281M in cash; instead they ended up $181M short of that.

[michaelt]

In general when you're a CEO or board member you'll make more money by granting yourself $x million in stock than you'll make by paying a dividend of $x million which has to be shared among all investors.

[encoderer]

Not to mention, there are tax benefits to stock based comp. First, you often have the choice of when to exercise the stock which can make a world of difference especially with AMT, and second, if you hold for a year you'll pay the long term cap gains rate. For lower income people (hehe in this case that would be people who make less than $400k) that's still 15% which is an incredible discount. For higher income folks it's now about 23% but, again, that represents a tidy discount against their marginal tax rate.

[dlgeek]

Bezos doesn't take any stock-based compensation and takes only a minimal salary (less than 90K/year).

He makes money by increasing the value of his existing stock.