STOCK COMPENSATION PLANS |
3 Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mar. 31, 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Disclosure of Compensation Related Costs, Share-based Payments [Abstract] | Ìý | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stock Compensation Plans |
NOTE 8 - STOCK COMPENSATION PLANS
Employees’ Plans
During the first quarter of 2017, the Compensation and Organization Committee of the Board of Directors approved grants under the 2015 Equity Plan to certain officers and employees for the 2017 to 2019 performance period. Shares granted under the awards consisted of 0.6 million restricted share units and 0.6 million performance shares.
The restricted share units are subject to continued employment, are retention based, will vest December 31, 2019, and are payable in common shares at a time determined by the Committee at its discretion.
The performance shares are subject to continued employment, and each performance share, if earned, entitles the holder to receive common shares or cash within a range between a threshold and maximum number of our common shares, with the actual number of common shares earned dependent upon whether the Company achieves certain objectives and performance goals as established by the Compensation and Organization Committee. The performance share grants vest over a period of three years and are intended to be paid out in common shares. The performance awards granted have a performance condition that is measured on the basis of relative TSR for the period of January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2019 and measured against the constituents of the S&P Metals and Mining ETF Index at the beginning of the relevant performance period. The final payouts will vary from zero to 200% of the original grant.
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 historic and projected stock prices was developed for both the Company and our predetermined peer group of mining and metals companies. The fair value assumes that performance goals will be achieved.
The expected term of the grant represents the time from the grant date to the end of the service period for each of the three plan-year agreements. We estimate the volatility of our common shares and that of the peer group of mining and metals companies 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 first quarter of 2017 performance share grants:
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