Exercise Stock Options for Employees
Exercising converts vested stock options into shares. Admins process exercises on behalf of employees. Employees can also initiate exercise requests through their My Cake portal if exercise requests are enabled, see Enable Employee Exercise Requests.
Process an exercise
Go to Plans → Options and click View pool for the relevant plan.
Find the grant and click Actions.
Select Exercise.
Complete the exercise details:
Exercise date: the date the exercise is being recorded
Number of options: how many options to exercise (maximum shown is available vested options)
The total amount due is calculated automatically (number of options × strike price)
Convert exercise / strike price currency to your cap table currency, only applicable to global option pools where grant was set to have exercise / strike price in local currency rather than cap table default
Choose whether to automatically issue a share certificate: if checked, Cake opens the certificate wizard immediately after the exercise is saved.
Click Exercise.
Options at exercise time
Early exercise (US only)
If early exercise is enabled, unvested options also appear as available to exercise. Enter a quantity above the vested amount to include unvested options. Cake will prompt you to notify the employee of their 83(b) election deadline (30 days from the exercise date).
Exercise into a Bare Trust
If your account has the Bare Trust (or SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle)) feature enabled, a checkbox appears to exercise into a Bare Trust. Select the holding entity from the dropdown.
What happens next
Exercised options convert to shares and appear on the cap table. The grant status updates to Exercised. If you auto-issued a share certificate, it will be ready to download from the Documents section.