Company: IMNN
Filing Date: 2025-06-09
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001641172-25-014324
Chunk: 68

Company: Imunon, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-06-09
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 68
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, and agents; and                                                                                            |
| ● | To                                                                                                                                  
 motivate such persons to act in the long-term best interests of the Company and its stockholders.                                   |

We consider equity and equity-based compensation to be a key component of our compensation program and believe that it is essential to attract, motivate, and retain talented, experienced, and committed employees and to incentivize our employees to achieve our short- and long-term goals. On February 12, 2018, the Board of Directors, upon the recommendation of the Compensation Committee, adopted the IMUNON, INC. 2018 Stock Incentive Plan which later was approved by our stockholders at the 2018 Annual Meeting on May 15, 2018. The 2018 Plan replaced our 2007 Stock Incentive Plan (the “2007 Plan”). The 2018 Stock Incentive Plan constitutes the only plan we currently utilize to provide equity and equity-based incentive compensation to eligible employees, consultants, and directors.

Historical Company Equity Usage.We believe that our historic equity usage has been reasonable in light of competitive considerations and the potential dilutive impact of equity award grants on our stockholders. Our average three-year “run rate” was 6.6% as a percentage of weighted common shares outstanding which compares favorably to the non-Russell 3000 Index (Pharmaceuticals, Biotechnology & Life Science) mean run rate of 8.6% for that same three-year period (with the run rate in each case calculated the number of shares subject to stock options and other equity awards granted during that period). We do not currently anticipate that our future annual long-term incentive grants will significantly exceed this run rate. As noted above, the number of shares of common stock currently available for future grants under the 2018 Plan is only 223,522 shares, demonstrating our need for additional shares to provide us greater flexibility to structure future incentives and to better attract, retain and award key employees to execute our current business plans and strategies. For more information on our past grants under the 2018 Plan, see “Potential Dilution and Burn Rate” below.

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The Need to Provide Competitive Compensation. Similar to other companies in our industry, we believe equity compensation is integral in providing a competitive total compensation package necessary to recruit, retain and reward key employees. Equity awards are commonly used by companies our size, and the ability to provide competitive grants is essential to competing in our labor markets. Therefore, we believe it is imperative to