Cisco CEO John Chambers is making a killing from exercising his options, but the system comes at a cost to the company under new accounting standards.

Last month was the fourth time this year, Chambers made a tidy profit by exercising the options on his employee share plan, in that instance almost tripling his money. But the company’s latest results show the plan is costing the company dearly cutting US$228 off the bottom line.

Chambers has reportedly paid a total of US$26 million to acquire 4.9 million shares this year. He’s then sold off 4.4 million of those for a healthy US$52.7 million virtually doubling his money.

The largest transaction was made in mid-November when Chambers exercised options to buy 1.53 million shares priced at $5.17 each for $7.9 million. He then sold 90 percent of those (1.38 million) for US$23.7 million. The options were set to expire in April and the transaction was undertaken according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules.

However, the company’s most recent results reflect accost on the books. According to new U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board rules, Cisco showed employee stock options as an expense. So while the company posted a profit of US$1.26 billion for the fiscal first quarter this number was dragged down some US$228 million to account for the stock options.

US$1.26 billion is not a bad number for three months trading, but the year ago quarter the company reported earnings of US$1.4 billion. The company says that if the expensing rule had been used last year the earnings would have come in at US$1.12 billion.

However, Cisco’s share price has dropped some 8.7 percent so far this year despite the company spending more than US$27 billion to buy back 1.5 billion of its own shares, at an average price of $18.15.