Options issued under equity incentive plans were designated as either incentive stock or non-statutory stock options. No option is granted with a term of more than 10 years from the date of grant. Exercisability of option awards may depend on achievement of certain performance measures determined by the Compensation Committee of our Board. Shares issued upon option exercise are newly issued shares. As of December 31, 2022, there were 1.4 million shares available for grant under the 2016 Omnibus Equity Incentive Plan.

Stock-based compensation expense, shown in the table below, is recorded in general and administrative expenses included in our consolidated statements of operations for the three months ended December 31, 2022 and 2021 as follows (in thousands):





	2022		2021
DLH employees (a)	$	372	$	338
Non-employee directors (b)	180		162
Total stock option expense	$	552	$	500

(a) Included in this amount are equity grants of restricted stock units to Executive Officers, which were issued in accordance with the DLH long-term incentive compensation policy in this fiscal year, and stock option grants to executive officers and non-executive company employees. The restricted stock units totaled 140,404 and 147,431 restricted stock units issued and outstanding at December 31, 2022 and 2021, respectively.

(b) Equity grants of restricted stock units were made in accordance with DLH compensation policy for non-employee directors and a total of 58,517 and 53,510 restricted stock units were issued and outstanding at December 31, 2022 and 2021, respectively.

Unrecognized stock-based compensation expense is presented in the table below for the three months ended December 31, 2022 and 2021 as follows (in thousands):




	2022		2021
Unrecognized expense for DLH employees (a)	$	4,750	$	5,592
Unrecognized expense for non-employee directors	538		486
Total unrecognized expense	$	5,288	$	6,078

(a) On a weighted average basis, the unrecognized expense for the three months ended December 31, 2022 is expected to be recognized within the next 3.70 years.

The aggregate intrinsic value in the table below represents the total pretax intrinsic value (i.e., the difference between the Company’s closing stock price on the last trading day of the period and the exercise price, times the number of shares) that would have been received by the option holders had all option holders exercised their in the money options on those dates. This amount will change based on the fair market value of the Company’s stock.


				(in years)
				Weighted
		Weighted		Average	(in thousands)
	(in thousands)	Average		Remaining	Aggregate
	Number of	Exercise		Contractual	Intrinsic
	Shares	Price		Term	Value




Options outstanding, September 30, 2022	2,392	$	7.05	5.40	$	13,566
Exercised	(250)	0.95		—	—

Cancelled	(25)	8.96		—	—
Options outstanding, December 31, 2022	2,117	$	7.74	5.78	$	9,913

Stock options shares outstanding, vested and unvested for the periods ended as follows (shares in thousands):



	December 31,	September 30,
	2022	2022
Vested and exercisable (a)	1,892	2,117
Unvested (b)	225	275
Options outstanding	2,117	2,392

(a) The weighted average exercise price of vested and exercisable shares was $6.74 and $5.86 at December 31, 2022 and September 30, 2022, respectively. Aggregate intrinsic value was approximately $9.9 million and $13.6 million at December 31, 2022 and September 30, 2022, respectively. The weighted average contractual term remaining was 5.4 years and 4.9 years at December 31, 2022 and September 30, 2022, respectively.