Effect of company issued options on share price
The answer to your question as asked is no.  Call options, even those issued by the company, cannot create new shares unless they are employee stock options. Company-issued warrants, on the other hand, can create new shares. "A company has 100,000 shares and 100,000 unexercised call options (company issued). Share price and strike price both at $1. What country is this related to?   I ask because, in the US, most people I know associate a ""call"" option with the instrument that is equivalent to 100 shares.   So 100,000 calls would be 10,000,000 shares, which exceeds the number of shares you're saying the company has.   I don't know if that means you pulled the numbers out of thin air, or whether it means you're thinking of a different type of option? Perhaps you meant incentive stock options meant to be given to employees?  Each one of those is equivalent to a single share.  They just aren't called ""call options"". In the rest of my answer, I'm going to assume you meant stock options. I assume the fact that these options exist will slow any price increases on the underlying shares due to potential dilution? I don't think the company can just create stock options without creating the underlying shares in the first place.  Said another way, a more likely scenario is that company creates 200,000 shares and agrees to float 50% of them while reserving the other 50% as the pool for incentive employee stock.  They then choose to give the employees options on the stock in the incentive pool, rather than outright grants of the stock, for various reasons.  (One of which is being nice to the employees in regards to taxes since there is no US tax due at grant time if the strike price is the current price of the underlying stock.) An alternative scenario when the company shares are liquidly traded is that the company simply plans to buy back shares from the market in order to give employees their shares when options are exercised.  In this case, the company needs the cash on hand, or cash flow to take money from, to buy those shares at current prices. Anyway, in either case, there is no dilution happening WHEN the options get exercised.  Any dilution happened before or at the time the options were created.   Meaning, the total number of shares in the company was already pre-set at an earlier time.  As a result, the fact that the options exist in themselves will not slow price changes on the stock. However, price changes will be impacted by the total float of shares in the company, or the impact to cash flow if the company has to buy shares to redeem its option commitments.   This is almost the same thing you're asking about, but it is technically different as to timing. If this is the case, can this be factored into any option pricing models like black-scholes? You're including the effect just by considering the total float of shares and net profits from cash flow when doing your modelling."
"Okay, I'm going to give you my opinion based on experience; not any technical understanding. The options - by themselves - are pretty meaningless in terms of determining their value. The business plan going forward, their growth expectations, the additional options to be authorized, the additional preferred stock offers they anticipate, even current estimated value of the company are some of the pieces of data you will be needing. I also want to say something cynical, like ""to hell with the stock options give me cold hard"" but that's just me. (My experience two-times so far has shown stock options to be worth very very little.)" "It depends on how the program is run. If the company runs the program out of treasury stock (shares that are authorized, but not issued), then there aren't any shares being purchased on the open market.   Because of that, the share price wouldn't be affected.    If you look in your employer's annual report, you will probably find how the program is run and how many shares are issued annually under that program. By comparing that to the daily trading volume of the company's stock you can gauge whether there's any likelihood of the share price being affected by the employee purchases. That is, of course, if shares are being purchased on the open market.  For example, here is Books-A-Million's program, as described in their 2011 annual report: Employee Stock Purchase Plan   The Company maintains an employee stock purchase plan under which shares of the Company’s common stock are reserved   for purchase by employees at 85% of the fair market value of the common stock at the lower of the market value for the   Company’s stock as of the beginning of the fiscal year or the end of the fiscal year. On May 20, 2010, the stockholders of the   Company approved an additional 200,000 shares available for issuance under the plan, bringing the aggregate number of   shares that may be awarded to 600,000. Of the total reserved shares, 391,987, 373,432 and 289,031 shares have been   purchased as of January 29, 2011, January 30, 2010 and January 31, 2009, respectively. This describes an instance of the employee purchase program being run from unissued stock, not open market purchases. From it, we can tell 18,555 shares were issued during the past fiscal year.  As their average daily volume is ~40,000 shares, if the program were run from a single open market purchase, it would have potential to ""move the market"".  One would think, though, that a company running it from open market purchases would spread the purchases over a period of time to avoid running up the price on themselves." Stock price is an indicator about the health of the company.  Increased profits (for example) will drive the stock price up; excessive debt (for example) will drive it down. The stock price has a profound effect on the company overall: for example, a declining share price will make it hard to secure credit, attract further investors, build partnerships, etc.  Also, employees are often holding options or in a stock purchase plan, so a declining share price can severely dampen morale. In an extreme case, if share prices plummet too far, the company can be pressured to reverse-split the shares, and (eventually) take the company private.  This recently happened to Playboy. In the equity world, if a stock trades at 110 and is going to pay a dividend of 10 in a few days, an option expiring after the ex date would take the dividend into account and would trade as if the stock were trading at 100. (Negative) interest rates may also lead to a similar effect. In the commodity world the cost of carry needs to be taken into account. There could also be some degree of dilution at play here. If they are rapidly expanding and hiring, or if they took on another round of funding each share may have a lower amount of value though the company might be worth more than they were previously. The newly issued options may also be of a different class. Share options. If you get options on £200,000-worth of a company and then its share price increases five-fold then you make £800,000, which is often taxed more favourably than salary. "A company doesn't offer up 100% of its shares to the market.  There's a float amount of varying significance, maybe 30% of the shares are put up for public offer.  Generally some amount of current shareholders will pledge some or all of their shares for offer to the public.  This may be how the venture capital, private equity or other current investors cash out their initial investment.  The company may issue new shares in order to raise money for some initiative.  It may be a combination of existing shares and new. Additionally, a company may hold some ""treasury shares"" on its balance sheet.  In this instance fluctuations in the share price directly affect the health of the balance sheet. As far as incentive goes, stock options to management and C-Suite employees keep everyone interested in an increasing stock price." You have a lot of different questions in your post - I am only responding to the request for how to value the ESPP. When valuing an ESPP, don't think about what you might sell the shares for in the future, think about what the market would charge you for that option today. In general, an option is worth much less than the underlying share itself. For the simplest example, assume you work at a public company, and your exercise price for your options is $.30, and you can only exercise those options until the end of today, and the cost of the shares on the public stock exchange is also $.30. You have the same 'strike price' as everyone else in the market, making your option worth nothing. In truth, holding that right to a specific strike price into the future does give you value, because it means you can realize the upside in share price gains, without risking any money on share losses. So, how do you value the options? If it's a public company with an active options market, you can easily compare your $.30 strike price with the value of call options in the market that have a $.30 strike price. That becomes the value to you of the option (caveat: it is unlikely you can find an exact match for the terms of your vesting period, but you should be able to find a good starting point). If it's a public company without an active options market, you will have to do a bit of estimation. If a current share is worth $.25 (so, close to your strike price), then your option is worth a little bit, but not much. Compare other shares in your industry / company size to get examples of the relative value between an option and a share. If the current share price is worth $.35, then your option is worth about $.05 [the $.05 profit you could get by immediately exercising and selling, plus a bit more for an option on a share that you can't buy in the open market]. If it's a private company, then you need to be very clear on how shares are to be valued, and what methods you have available to sell back to the company / other individuals. You can then consider as per above, how to value the option for a share, vs the share itself. Without a clear way to sell your shares of a private company [ideally through a sale directly back to the company that you are able to force them to agree on; ie: the company will buyback shares at 5x Net income for the previous year, or something like that], then the value of a small number of shares is very nebulous. There is an extremely limited market for shares of private companies, if you don't own enough to exert control. In your case, because the valuation appears to be $2/share [be sure that these are the same share classes you have the option to buy], your option would be worth a little more than $1.70, if you didn't have to wait 4 years to exercise it. This would be total compensation of about $10k, if you were able to exercise today. Many people don't end up working for an early job in their career for 4 years, so you need to consider whether how much that will reduce the value of the ESPP for you personally. Compared with salary of 90k, 10k worth of stock in 4 years may not be a heavy motivating compensation consideration. Note also that because the company is not public, the valuation of $2/share should be taken with a grain of salt. "Simply put, yes. I bought that call. I was betting the shares would rise in value by Jan 2018, and chose the $130 strike. With a strike nearly a year away, I paid a premium that was all time value as the shares traded at   Now the shares are replaced by $128. The time value has gone to zero, and there is no intrinsic ""in the money"" value. If the shares were bought at $140, the time value stills drops to zero, but the option is closed at $10 in the money.  My answer was for a cash deal. In a case where the old shares are replaced by new shares or a combination of shares and money, the options terms are changed to reflect the combination of new assets for old.  Update based on disclosure that it's Monsanto we are discussing.   Bayer and Monsanto have announced that they signed a definitive   agreement under which Bayer will acquire Monsanto for USD 128 per   share in an all-cash transaction. Based on Monsanto’s closing share   price on May 9, 2016, the day before Bayer’s first written proposal to   Monsanto, the offer represents a premium of 44 percent to that price.  You can see that the deal has been in the works for some time now. Further research shows they expect the deal to close by ""the end of 2017"". It's not a done deal. This is why the options are still trading.   Now the shares are replaced by $128. The time value has gone to zero, and there is no intrinsic ""in the money"" value. If the shares were bought at $140, the time value stills drops to zero, but the option is closed at $10 in the money.  My answer was for a cash deal. In a case where the old shares are replaced by new shares or a combination of shares and money, the options terms are changed to reflect the combination of new assets for old.  Update based on disclosure that it's Monsanto we are discussing.  Bayer and Monsanto have announced that they signed a definitive   agreement under which Bayer will acquire Monsanto for USD 128 per   share in an all-cash transaction. Based on Monsanto’s closing share   price on May 9, 2016, the day before Bayer’s first written proposal to   Monsanto, the offer represents a premium of 44 percent to that price. You can see that the deal has been in the works for some time now. Further research shows they expect the deal to close by ""the end of 2017"". It's not a done deal. This is why the options are still trading." "You seem to have a little confusion over terminology that should be cleared up: You are calling this ""day-trading"" Day-trading is the term for performing multiple trading actions in a single day. While it appears that the COO has performed a buy and a sell on the same day, most people would consider this a 'single trade'. In reality, it seems that the COO had 'stock options' [a contract providing the option for the holder to buy stock at a specific price, at some point in the future], provided as part of his compensation package. He decided or was required to 'exercise' those options today. This means he bought the shares using his special 'option price'. It is extremely common for employees who exercise stock options, to sell all of the resulting stock immediately. This is very different from usual day-trading, which implies that he would have bought stock in the morning at a low price, and then sold it later at a high price. You are calling this 'insider trading'. That term specifically often implies some level of unethical behavior. In general, stock options offered to executive employees are strictly limited in how they can be exercised. For example, most stock option plans require employees to wait x number of years before they can exercise them. This gives the employee incentive to stay longer, and for a high-level executive with the ability to strongly impact company performance, it gives incentive to do well. Technically you are correct, this is likely considered an 'insider trade', but given that it seems to have been a stock option exercise, it does not necessarily imply that there was any special reasoning for why he did the trade today. It could simply be that today was the first day the stock option rules allowed him to exercise. As to your final question - no, these profits are the COO's, to do with as he likes." In addition to all these great answers, check out the Wikipedia entry on options. The most important thing to note from their definition is that an option is a derivative (and nothing about any derivative is simple).  Because it is a derivative, increases or decreases in the price of the underlying stock won't automatically result in the same amount of change in the value of the option. Having stock options means that you have worked for and rightfully earned a part of the company's capital appreciation. Takeover of the company would indicate someone is interested in the company (something should be valuable). It would be unwise to not strike before the period lapses since the strike price is always lower than market price and takeovers generally increases stock values ... it is capital gains all the way my friend. Good luck. *observations not in professional capacity. pls consult a professional for investment related advice. In short, yes. Implied volatility will capture any expected upcoming material announcements. There is also supply/demand impact bundled in which may inflate an option price, and by extension increase implied volatility. OTM and ITM options are particularly predisposed to this phenomenon -- which is of course at odds with the traditional BS model assumptions -- the result is referred to as the volatility smile. Implied volatility is quoted as an annualised measure but isn't necessarily an annual value -- it will correspond to the option time period. So in a sense, I can think of the employees / option-holders as another investor?   That makes sense - but many of the examples I'm finding online are still confusing me. Based on the example above, it seems like option-holders would be paying the same exercise price as the VC. Per [Andreesen Horowitz](https://a16z.com/2016/08/24/options-ownership/) this seems uncommon:   &gt; The exercise price of employee options — the price per share needed to actually own the shares — is often less than the original issue price paid by the most recent investor, who holds preferred stock.    In reality, would option-holders receive, say, 40% (using example above) for their $6m in exercise value due to receiving common stock, with the founder being diluted to even further? "An option without the vesting period and the price at which one can exercise the option is of not much value. If vesting is determined by board, then at any given point in time they can change the vesting period to say 3, 5, 10 years any number. The other aspect is at what price you are allowed to exercise the option, ie if the stock is of value 10, you may be given an option to buy this at 10, 20 or 100. This has to be stated upfront for you to know the real value. On listing if the value is say 80, then if you have the option to exercise at 10, or 20 you would make money, else at 100 you loose money and hence choose not to exercise the option. However your having stuck around the company for ""x"" years in anticipation of making money would go waste. Without a vesting period or the price to exercise the option, they are pretty much meaningless and would depend on the goodwill of the founders"