Company: FFWM
Filing Date: 2025-04-17
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001104659-25-036041
Chunk: 39

Company: First Foundation Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-17
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 39
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 2024 Plan”), amended to increase the number of authorized shares available for issuance under the 2024 Equity Incentive Plan (the “2024 Plan”) by 2,500,000 shares and provide additional rights afforded to the Administrator including appointing agents and delegating functions to others, provided such acts do not affect certain exemptions under Section 16 of the Exchange Act. Introduction and Background At our Annual Meeting in 2024, our stockholders adopted and approved the 2024 Plan pursuant to which we have issued equity incentives to key service providers. The use of stock-based awards continues to be a key element of our compensation program. Our 2024 Plan is the only plan under which equity-based compensation may currently be awarded to our executive officers, employees, directors and consultants. The 2024 Plan permitted a maximum of 1,500,000 shares to be issued under the 2024 Plan. The Board has approved, and stockholders are being asked to approve, the Amended 2024 Plan to increase by 2,500,000 the number of authorized shares available for issuance under the Amended 2024 Plan, resulting in a total of 4,000,000 shares authorized under the 2024 Plan. This increase would result in 2,611,952 shares being available for future grants. The Board has determined that there are not sufficient shares available for issuance under the 2024 Plan to meet our needs for future grants during the coming years, and an increase in available shares is appropriate to continue to assist us in attracting and retaining capable, talented individuals to serve in the capacity of employees, consultants, and non-employee directors and maintaining a competitive edge in today’s volatile business environment. The increase of 2,500,000 shares was determined subjectively by the Board based on the number of shares currently available, the number of shares expected to become available in the next twelve months due to forfeited or expired grants, and the number of awards we estimate will be granted over the coming years. When determining the increased number of shares to allocate to the Amended 2024 Plan, the Board of Directors and its Compensation Committee considered our gross burn rate for the past three years along with the estimated dilutive impact of the share increase and similar statistics for a peer group of companies. Burn rate is the rate at which a company is granting equity compensation share awards, with the gross number of such shares awarded expressed as a percentage of its weighted average shares outstanding. Our three-year average annual gross burn rate for