Company: ACCO
Filing Date: 2025-03-28
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0000950170-25-046374
Chunk: 54

Company: ACCO BRANDS Corp
Filing Date: 2025-03-28
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 54
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,807 shares remained available for awards under the Plan.

Factors Considered by the Compensation and Human Capital Committee and Board

In setting the proposed number of shares to be reserved and issuable under the Plan, the Compensation and Human Capital Committee and the Board of Directors considered a number of factors, which included the following:

Expected duration of shares available for issuance under the Plan . Based on the requested number of shares to be reserved under the Plan if the amendment is adopted, and on our three-year average burn rate, we expect that the share reserve will cover Awards (as defined below) for approximately 1 year. The actual rate at which we use shares under the Plan may be more or less than our anticipated future usage and will depend upon various unknown factors, such as our future stock price, plan participation levels, hiring and promotion activity, award mix and vehicles, competitive market practices, acquisitions and divestitures, and rates of forfeiture.

Expected potential dilution . As of March 24, 2025, the potential dilution under the Plan as adopted in 2022 and amended in 2023 was 15.7 percent. As of March 24, 2025, the total potential dilution with the shares requested for the Plan as amended would approximate 19.1 percent in total.

We define potential dilution as the sum of the total number of (i) shares subject to outstanding full value share grants (i.e., awards other than stock options and stock appreciation rights), (ii) shares subject to outstanding stock options and (iii) shares of common stock available for future grants under the Plan, expressed as a percentage of the fully diluted shares of common stock outstanding.

We believe that the expected potential dilution that will result from the amendment to the Plan is reasonable under the circumstances for the following reasons, among others:

The weighted average exercise price of the 5,083,594 outstanding stock options as of March 24, 2025 is $8.48 compared to our closing stock price of $4.44 on this same date. Approximately 1,016,515 outstanding stock options with an exercise price of $9.04 per share expire in the next year and there is a possibility that these soon to expire options may not be exercised. We ceased granting stock options in 2023 and do not intend to issue stock option awards under the Plan going forward.

We have 10,314,334 outstanding full value awards (includes all outstanding PSUs at target and all outstanding RSUs). As a result of the