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Tips for negotiating a contract with stock options. Read the contract carefully. Make sure you understand the terms of the agreement. Look for the number of shares offered, the vesting schedule and the strike price to see if they compare to similar jobs in your area and industry.
Ask for advice. Seek advice from trusted friends or family members who have knowledge of stock options, particularly in your industry. They should be able to tell you if the contract offers fair options. Research the company. Decide whether or not stock options are a valuable benefit based on its past success and plans for future growth.
Learn about the mission statement and objectives to determine potential growth. Consider the vesting period. Depending on your career path and goals, the vesting period could be an important factor.
Make sure there are plenty of opportunities for career growth so you can exercise your stock options. When to exercise stock options. Related View More arrow right. Find out what churn rates and retention rates are, how they differ from one another, how to calculate each one with examples and tips for improving both. To understand the ins and outs of employee stock options, let's go over the basics. Stock options aren't shares of actual stock. An employee stock option is a contract that gives employees the right to buy a specific number of shares of company stock at a specified price called the strike price, within a particular time frame known as the exercise window.
Although some of the rules that regulate stock options are imposed by tax and securities laws, others are at the company's discretion. To take full advantage of your stock option offering, you should familiarize yourself with your equity grant agreement before making any decisions or taking any action with your stock options.
The grant document is how your company will award equity compensation, and it will spell out the details of your equity plan, including:. Consider this scenario: Let's say you got a job at a new startup, and you are granted 10, stock options, vesting over four years.
If you remain employed by the company for all four years, you will be able to exercise all of your stock options. If the stock price decreases, it's best not to exercise the options and let them expire. There are two main types of stock options that companies award to their employees: incentive stock options, or ISOs, and nonqualified stock options, or NSOs. The most significant difference between the two is in the tax treatment. There are also some ways to exercise without having to put up the cash to buy all of your options.
For example, you can make an exercise-and-sell transaction. To do this, you will purchase your options and immediately sell them. Rather than having to use your own money to exercise, the brokerage handling the sale will effectively front you the money, using the money made from the sale in order to cover what it costs you to buy the shares.
Another way to exercise is through the exercise-and-sell-to-cover transaction. With this strategy, you sell just enough shares to cover your purchase of the shares, and hold the rest. You can find this in your contract. When and how you should exercise your stock options will depend on a number of factors. You would be better off buying on the market.
But if the price is on the rise, you may want to wait on exercising your options. Once you exercise them, your money is sunk in those shares. So why not wait until the market price is where you would sell? That said, if all indicators point to a climbing stock price and you can afford to hold your shares for at least a year, you may want to exercise your options now. Also, if your time period to exercise is about to expire, you may want to exercise your options to lock in your discounted price.
You will usually need to pay taxes when you exercise or sell stock options. What you pay will depend on what kind of options you have and how long you wait between exercising and selling.
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