There was some speculation regarding the change of year-end date, alluding to one of the main reasons probably being that options could be vested earlier. I believe that this speculation may not have been inaccurate, but I think it just wasn't carried far enough.

Today, as I worked on some forestry blocks on the north end of Vancouver Island, I thought about the fact that it was March 31st, the former year-end, and I tried to look at a bigger picture.

IF the year-end actually was changed to allow for options to vest earlier, but there had been something really spectacular happen before March 31st that could conceivably have been known to insiders, then it would have presented a potential conflict of interest. Therefore, it would have made sense to change the year-end BUT to also hope that the "big news" would come out after March 31st. That way, there could be no allegations that the year-end was changed solely to allowed for the early vestment of options: the insiders defence would be "but it didn't matter, because the Big News happened after the old year-end anyway."

But if the old year-end date had been retained, and something was about to happen in early April, then the vestment of options today which suddenly became really valuable in the next couple of weeks would certainly cause a lot of investors to raise eyebrows about timing. So by vesting those options three months earlier and by having a "cooling down" period between vestment and something big happening, the people receiving the options aren't made to look as "bad" or "lucky" or however you might want to phrase it.

I will be the first to admit that this theory is approaching true X-Files Conspiracy Level, and therefore might be completely ridiculous. It's entirely possible that the year-end date was switched just because it's easier and more convenient to have it match the calendar year-end. I know this because I once went through the exercise of changing a year-end from early spring to Dec 31st for one of the companies that I owned.

Anyway, even if my theory is complete garbage, I will pretend to believe it, because it makes me feel really good about the coming several weeks.

If we can say Happy New Year's on December 31st, can we say Happy New Quarter's now?