8. SHARE-BASED COMPENSATION

Performance-Based Shares. In January 2023, the Company issued a total of 40,541 performance-based shares to the Company’s CEO under the terms of his employment agreement. In the second quarter of 2023, an additional total of 79,815 performance-based shares were issued to four other Company executives. The vesting for these performance-based shares is based on the compounded annual growth rate of the Company’s Adjusted EBITDA and Free Cash Flow Per Share, as defined, for the three-year periods ending December 31, 2023, December 31, 2024, and December 31, 2025. For the 2023 period, one-sixth of such performance-based shares will vest on the anniversary date of the award if the Company’s annual Adjusted EBITDA for 2023 reflects at least 10% per annum growth since 2020, and one-sixth of such performance-based shares will vest on the anniversary date if the Company’s annual Free Cash Flow Per Share for 2023 reflects at least 12% per annum growth since 2020. Vesting of the performance-based shares is similar for the 2024 and 2025 periods.

In April 2023, the Compensation Committee approved the satisfaction of certain performance criteria related to our operations in 2022. Such performance measures involved multi-year growth rates for EBITDA and free cash flow per share. As a result, a total of 73,885 shares were approved to vest upon the later of (a) such approval by the Compensation Committee or (b) the anniversary date of their grant. During the second quarter of 2023, a total of 64,223 shares vested, while the remaining 9,662 shares vested in the third quarter of 2023.

Restricted Stock Awards. On May 18, 2023, the Company issued to non-executive members of its Board of Directors, as compensation for their annual service, a total of 70,945 restricted shares under the Company’s 2015 Equity Incentive Plan (the “2015 Plan”) with a one-year vesting period.

As of September 30, 2023, the Company had 671,041 share-based awards authorized by shareholders and available for grant from the 2015 Plan.

The following table summarizes information related to the Company’s common stock options as of September 30, 2023:

​

​

Components of compensation expense are as follows:

​

​

As of September 30, 2023, there was approximately $2.5 million of unrecognized compensation cost related to unvested stock options previously granted that is expected to be recognized over a weighted-average period of approximately 2.0 years. As of such date, there was also $1.7 million of unrecognized compensation cost related to unvested restricted and performance-based shares, which is expected to be recognized over a weighted-average period of 1.3 years.