19. Stock Options

In September 2018, our stockholders approved our 2018 Equity Incentive Plan, which provides for a maximum of 1,150,000 awards that can be issued as options, stock appreciation rights, restricted stock, stock units, other equity awards or cash awards. 

On October 1, 2020, the Board approved an amendment to the Company’s 2018 Equity Incentive Plan (the “Plan”) to increase the maximum number of shares that may be granted as an award under the Plan to any non-employee director during any one calendar year to: (i) chairperson or lead director – 300,000 shares of common stock; and (ii) other non-employee director - 250,000 shares of common stock, which reflects an increase in the annual limits for awards to be granted to non-employee directors under the Plan.

On November 20, 2020, the Company held its 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. At the Annual Meeting, the Company’s stockholders approved an amendment to the Company’s 2018 Equity Incentive Plan to increase the number of shares of common stock that the Company will have authority to grant under the plan by an additional 1,850,000 shares of common stock.

In addition, pursuant to the employment agreement entered into with Mr. Monteverdi, the Company granted Mr. Monteverdi a non-plan option to purchase 648,000 shares of common stock at an exercise price of $1.84 that vest pro rata on each of September 1, 2021, September 1, 2022, September 1, 2023 and September 1, 2024.

During the period ended September 30, 2021, the Company issued ten year options to purchase 720,000 shares at exercise prices ranging from $2.62 to $4.20 per share to employees.

On July 1, 2021, in compliance with the terms of an employment agreement entered into with Mr. Korb, the Company’s CFO, the Company granted him ten year options to purchase 400,000 shares of common stock at an exercise price of $4.03 per share vesting annually commencing on September 1, 2022.

On August 31, 2021, due to the resignation of an employee, unvested options for 50,000 shares of common stock were forfeited by the employee.

On September 13, 2021, the Company granted the non-executive members of its board ten year options to purchase 48,500 shares of common stock at an exercise price of $5.10 per share, as a component of annual compensation.

The options awarded during the nine months ended September 30, 2021 were valued using a Black-Scholes option pricing model.

The following assumptions were used in the Black-Scholes model:

A summary of all of the Company’s option activity during the period January 1, 2020 to September 30, 2021 is as follows:

The following tables summarize information about stock options outstanding as of September 30, 2021:

As of September 30, 2021, there were unvested options to purchase 2,005,630 shares of common stock. Total expected unrecognized compensation cost related to such unvested options is $6,093,119 which is expected to be recognized over a period of 45 months.

The intrinsic value of the options at September 30, 2021 was $5,534,868.

As of September 30, 2021, there was an aggregate of 2,093,438 options to purchase shares of common stock granted under the Company’s 2018 Equity Incentive Plan, and an aggregate of 492,466 restricted shares granted to certain officers and directors of the Company in settlement of liabilities owing to them, with 414,096 shares available for future grants.