Hansen says options given inadvertently

Hansen Natural Corp., the maker of Monster Energy drinks, told regulators that it inadvertently issued stock options to a director in 2004 several months after the option plan had expired.

The company may have violated a Nasdaq Stock Market rule in giving the unnamed outside director options to purchase 12,000 shares in November 2004, four months after the plan ended, Corona-based Hansen said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

Hansen in November withheld some figures of its third- quarter earnings pending the outcome of an investigation of its stock option awards dating to 1996. The company had named a committee of directors and hired outside lawyers to conduct the investigation.

“We believe this infraction in and of itself is relatively minor,” wrote Andrew Sawyer, an analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co., in a research note Thursday. “It does not involve any operating managers, it is relatively small in scale, and the company is categorizing the violation as inadvertent.”

Hansen shares fell 42 cents to $37.58.