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STOCK-BASED COMPENSATION
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3 Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mar. 31, 2015
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| Disclosure of Compensation Related Costs, Share-based Payments [Abstract] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Disclosure of Compensation Related Costs, Share-based Payments [Text Block] |
In April 2014, the Company adopted the Medical Transcription Billing, Corp. 2014 Equity Incentive Plan (the “2014 Plan,”), reserving a total of 1,351,000 shares of common stock for grants to employees, officers, directors and consultants. Permissible awards include incentive stock options, non-statutory stock options, stock appreciation rights, restricted stock, restricted stock units, performance stock and cash-settled awards and other stock-based awards in the discretion of the Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors (the “Compensation Committee”), including unrestricted stock grants. During April 2014, the Compensation Committee authorized and the Company awarded 217,500 restricted stock awards (“RSUs”) in the aggregate under the 2014 Plan to two named executive officers and three of its independent directors. During September 2014, the Compensation Committee authorized and the Company awarded 171,000 RSUs in the aggregate under the 2014 Plan to its four independent directors, two named officers and six employees. On March 25, 2015, the Compensation Committee authorized and the Company awarded 20,000 RSUs to two named employees. One third of these RSUs vest annually over three years as long as the employee or executive continues to be employed by the Company on the applicable vesting date or the director remains a member of the Company’s Board of Directors. As a result, the Company recognized stock-based compensation cost beginning in April 2014. The Company’s policy election for these graded-vesting RSUs is to recognize compensation expense on a straight-line basis over the total requisite service period for the entire award. The RSUs, other than the cash-settled and performance-based RSUs, contain a provision in which the units shall immediately vest and become converted into the right to receive a cash payment payable on the original vesting date after a change in control as defined in the award agreement.
Effective September 15, 2014 and November 10, 2014, the Compensation Committee authorized an additional 125,000 and 10,000 RSUs, respectively, in the aggregate to certain employees that vest ratably beginning in the fourth quarter of 2014 through the third quarter of 2015 based on whether certain performance measures are attained in each of those quarters. Shares that do not vest in any quarter because the performance measures were not attained are forfeited. The performance-based RSUs authorized on November 10, 2014 were not issued. None of the performance-based RSUs authorized on September 15, 2014 vested in the fourth quarter of 2014 or the first quarter of 2015. Accordingly, through March 31, 2015, no expense has been recorded related to the performance-based RSUs.
On March 25, 2015, the Compensation Committee authorized 211,400 cash-settled RSUs to be given to certain employees in Pakistan. Of the total authorized, 196,600 were granted. The cash-settled RSUs vest over three years with the first vesting date being July 27, 2015 for those employees who were employed by the Company as of July 28, 2014. We engaged a third-party valuation specialist to assist us in valuing the RSUs granted in April 2014, who determined the fair value of the RSUs was $3.60 per share at the time of grant. The market price of our common stock on the date of grant for the RSUs awarded in September 2014 and March 2015 was $3.83 and $2.50, respectively, and was used in recording the fair value of the award. The aggregate compensation cost for RSUs recorded under the 2014 Plan, including the cash-settled RSUs was $126,849 for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 of which $119,202 was recorded through equity and $7,647 was recorded in the condensed consolidated statement of operations. The stock-based compensation was recorded as follows:
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