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Employee Stock Options
Companies sometimes grant call options to certain employees as a form of equity compensation to incentivize good performance or reward seniority. Employee stock options (ESOs) effectively give an employee the right to buy the company’s stock at a specified price for a finite period of time. ESOs often have vesting schedules that limit the ability to exercise. If the stock’s market price has risen once the vesting periods end, the employee can benefit greatly by exercising those options.
For example, if you begin to work at a startup, you might be given stock options for 12,000 shares of the startup’s stock as part of your compensation. These options aren’t given to you immediately; they vest over a designated period of time. Vesting means it becomes available to use. So after one year, you might be able to exercise 3,000 shares, then another 3,000 each year after that. By the end of four years, all 12,000 shares will be vested.
Employee stock options usually come with a “cliff” as well. This is the amount of time you must work with the company to receive your shares. If you get a new job before you reach the cliff, you lose all your stock options. After that cliff, even if you leave the company, your options will continue to vest on schedule.
Options often come with an expiration date, which is the last point at which you can exercise your option. This could be a set number of years after the option is granted or a set number of days after you leave the company. The details of the expiration date should be in your contract.
Employee stock options are not publicly-traded: they are granted exclusively by corporations to their employees. Upon ESO exercise, the company must grant new shares to that employee, which has a dilutive effect as it increases the overall number of shares. Investors should pay attention to the number of employee options that have been granted to understand their fully-dilutive potential.