Originally Posted by
Bergman
One theory is if the company agrees to several side agreements before the main contract, then the final agreement doesn’t seem so costly to shareholders, other employees groups, etc. I’ll take 5 $200M improvements now vs holding out another year for a $1B win.
First off all, analysts don’t lose track of $200M here and $200M there. Investors may not always make good decisions, but any investors that management cares about can sum up multiple incremental agreements just as well as you and I can. I also don’t personally care about optics for other work groups - that’s not my problem. And while five $200M agreements over a year sounds better than $1B a year from now sounds logical, there’s no reason that hypothetical is even relevant to the discussion. We could just as easily be talking about a zero-cost agreement now followed by $3B in two years vs. nothing now and $3B in six months.
Beware the false choices - they seem to be getting offered up with increasing frequency here and elsewhere.