A good portion of compensation is in stock. There is nothing wrong with it per se. It shows up on the income statement as an expense - all good. But then when people quote "operating cashflow" the company has added back that expense because it wasn't in cash. So the quoted operating cashflow (which in theory should be "real") becomes more fake from an economic viewpoint.

It's not bad, you just have to be aware of it. It's in the k - right there in the income statement (the opex lines will all have some % which is equity) and cashflow statement (the operating cashflow calc explicitly has a line for it).