WTF is a 409A?

Both Stripe and Instacart have recently upgraded their internal values via a 409A evaluation procedure. Due to the evaluations, the startups’ values were reduced by 28% and 38%, respectively.

What do these price changes mean for other pandemic-inspired, late-stage startups? And how much importance should we accord to them? To learn more about the 409A procedure and the reasons why digital businesses would actually want a lower value at this time, we met with representatives from Carta, AngelList, EquityZen, and other companies.

What is a 409A?

Since the Enron affair, which gave rise to 409A evaluations, they have grown widespread in the IT sector. Congress created Section 409A of the IRS tax code to regulate how businesses grant stock options to their workers in response to some of Enron executives’ wrongdoings.

While receiving 409A appraisals is not required, the IRS has essentially made them so for privately-funded businesses, according to Kevin Swan, co-head of global private markets at Morgan Stanley’s workplace solutions group, who spoke to TechCrunch. Swan’s team also offers services like cap table management and startup salary data, in addition to doing 409A appraisals for businesses on a regular basis.

According to Swan, the IRS instructs businesses to calculate a striking price for the restricted stock units (RSU) and options they offer to workers using a reasonably defined reference value. Simply put, a business may show the IRS a 409A valuation and claim that another party has determined the value of the company’s common stock. If they fail to do this, entrepreneurs will be responsible for figuring out their own fair market value in case the IRS shows up.

Private firms clearly don’t have public share prices they can reference to verify their values are fair, while most public companies may simply issue RSUs and options at a strike price similar to their share price at the time of issuance.

According to Phil Haslett, founder and chief strategy officer of EquityZen, this is where independent 409A suppliers may help. Nearly all IT companies with more than $5 million in funding and more than 10 workers, according to him, go through the 409A valuation procedure at least once a year.

Companies are also obliged to request a new 409A assessment if they believe a substantial event, such as securing fresh finance, completing an acquisition, or (hum) enduring a big market slump, may have an impact on their worth. A fresh 409A figure may cost $1,000 for a tiny startup or up to $20,000 for an established business.

But it’s crucial to remember that 409A values are quite distinct from and sometimes very different from the implied prices chosen by investors in a fundraising round. A corporation may request a 409A evaluation in response to a capital round, but the actual 409A valuation is carried out by a third-party entity, much like an auditor.

These companies often take into account various variables than VCs do. In essence, founders contend that investors are investing in a new sort of value because they are purchasing a different kind of stock.

Haslett noted that while many firms are reluctant to admit it, 409A values nearly invariably turn out to be lower than valuations from previous investment rounds. In other words, the 409A is a cautious value, but an investor-selected external valuation can be a little more ambitious.

The fact that investors in startups get preferred stock is one cause of this difference. Because common equity is often priced at a discount to preferred stock until a business goes public, they frequently assign greater values to their portfolio firms than a 409A provider would. The value of common stock is often the only one affected by 409A valuations since repricing preferred shares as part of a 409A procedure is laborious and hence extremely infrequent.

The second distinction is between the methods of valuation and supporting predictions utilised in a 409A procedure.

A third-party business will commonly employ two techniques to determine a company’s value when doing a 409A appraisal. The first is the approach of similar firms, which considers other market participants to choose an acceptable value multiple to apply to the company being evaluated. It’s so predictable that it almost seems like a formula: 409A assessors will tell a firm what public market businesses they resemble, and the more developed the startup is, the more of an influence public stock prices may have on its value.

Despite being considerable, Stripe’s 28% value haircut is nothing compared to the reductions some of its public counterparts have seen. Block, once known as Square, has lost about 80% of its value since its 52-week peak, while PayPal has seen a similar decline. The price of Shopify’s shares has dropped by over 82% from its 52-week high, and the list goes on.

Haslett said, “If you’re Stripe right now, I suppose a few things occurred. The publicly listed fintech businesses that are likely your colleagues or rivals traded at significantly lower values than they did in the past, which is one thing that can be said to be unmistakably accurate. The second possibility is that you have adjusted your advice in accordance with the new environment you are in.

Haslett said that discounted cash flow valuation is the second technique for figuring out a 409A. It is a common technique that bankers and accountants use to evaluate businesses, but since it depends on cash flow estimates, many early-stage firms aren’t profitable, it isn’t always relevant to them.

Furthermore, businesses often purposefully provide 409A auditors a more temperate set of estimates than they offer to their investors. They do this in order to get the advantages of a low 409A value. Swan highlighted that while it is usual practise for firms to offer auditors and investors two separate sets of financials, they still need to walk the “tightrope” of delivering auditors predictions that are high enough not to raise any red lights.

So, is having a low 409A valuation a good thing?

Yes. Particularly for workers.

When the public learns that a company’s value has decreased, it is often viewed negatively. A value reduction often indicates that either the firm is having trouble, or that investors are unconfident about the state of the market. These worries often apply to businesses whose values are reduced during investment rounds, but Haslett noted that they aren’t necessarily relevant to 409A valuation reductions.

A firm earning a 409A value that is lower than its investor-assigned valuation is actually seen favourably by many founders and industry professionals. This is so that businesses may offer stock options to their workers at a lesser cost when the 409A value is low. Additionally, businesses may utilise the new, lower 409A value as a recruitment tactic, attracting candidates with affordable options and the promise of a greater payout when the firm finally leaves.

Companies consider 409As as a “internal equity issuing permission process, and not them thinking we’re worth less,” according to Sumukh Sridhara, director of founder products at AngelList.

“If such businesses had their way, they would contend that their value is 5% of that of their comparable private corporations. However, he said, “They won’t really get away with it.

Last year, AngelList introduced AngelList Stack, a collection of founder-focused solutions that includes a 409A valuation tool. Since the majority of firms on AngelList are in their early stages, according to Sridhara, “their argument is that their stock is worthless” in order to more effectively give options and equity.

A revised internal valuation might indicate that a firm is seeking to sweeten the deal for possible workers and is moving to hire, since 409As may aid startups with recruitment and staff retention.

Sridhara gave the following illustration: If an employee receives 100,000 shares of stock, it would be in the employer’s best interest to make that stock seem to be worth $1 to a 409A analyst rather than the $10 a share that venture capitalists could have paid to invest in the same business. Employees’ cost to exercise those shares would be $50,000 rather than $100,000 if you can convince the court that they are only worth 50 cents a share. As a result, “it’s more advantageous for the employee, and they receive a bit more upside to their capital gains,” he continued.

According to Swan, companies may also go back and change the strike prices they had given to already-issued options. He pointed out that while though the process of having these options repriced may be extremely time-consuming from the standpoint of the cap table, many businesses prefer to do so since it aids in both employee retention and recruitment.

Employee stock option prices are important, particularly in a climate of high inflation, a bear market, and unstable employment. According to a poll by EquityBee conducted earlier this year, a quarter of American startup workers cannot afford to exercise their stock options due to the financial risk involved in doing so and paying taxes, as well as because they lack the cash up front.

The 409A’s contents are very important to employees and new hire offers since it affects the number of shares they would get, according to Sridhara. “You wind up being a bit less well positioned if you’re out there in the market with a value of $100 billion but you can’t credibly persuade current or new workers.”

According to Haslett, stock options may also have especially severe repercussions on workers who are let go from computer organisations. Whether a person leaves a firm willingly or not, any vested options normally expire within 90 days after that departure. When the 409A value is high and an employee is obliged to exercise their options, they will probably owe hefty capital gains taxes.

According to Haslett, this is one of the reasons why some businesses would ask for a 409A evaluation before carrying out a significant wave of layoffs.

The least you could do, according to Haslett, “is update your 409A valuation before you can let all these people go so that their tax burden is a lot lower, and it makes it a little bit easier for them,” though he also pointed out that there are a lot of other reasons why a company might request a new appraisal.

In contrast to yearly, 409As may be updated more often for later-stage corporations, particularly those with a lot of secondary activity, perhaps quarterly or monthly.

We should point out that a corporation doesn’t necessarily have to play defence in order to have a lower 409A value. Instacart reduced its own value in March, but a few months later, one of the company’s investors further reduced their estimation. The decrease in Stripe’s internal value follows a reduction of almost 35% in Fidelity’s valuation of the fintech company this year.

In the end, businesses who are seeing a decline in their 409A values are still responding to unfavourable variables that are harming their operations. Instead than aggressively seeking for fresh talent, they often receive a reassessment to keep their workers’ alternatives from fully disappearing.

Also Read: Salesforce shutters Hong Kong office leans on Alibaba in China

Are Instacart and Stripe kicking off a trend?

After learning the fundamentals of 409As, the natural follow-up question is whether the current economic crisis would prompt more corporations to request a 409A value repricing. According to Sridhara, more entrepreneurs are turning to AngelList for assistance in rethinking their equity pay structure.

Companies perform refreshes whether they want to or not since there is so much activity in the secondary market, according to him. You must be knowledgeable about your funding.

It may sometimes become quite challenging. According to data from Carta, more businesses are failing to update their 409As that have expired. According to Chad Wilbur, VP of valuations at Carta, the number of businesses scheduled to amend their 409As owing to expirations was 19% fewer than anticipated in May 2022. That percentage increased to 24% in June.

Wilbur said that many businesses aren’t changing their 409A values “perhaps because things are so unpredictable right now,” but he refused to comment on why Stripe and Instacart amended their 409As. additionally, since these internal reviews are a direct outcome of employers giving workers alternatives, the lack of 409A assessment requests may indicate that fewer employers are now actively recruiting.

While this is going on, Carta is encouraging clients to think about revising their 409A if any of the following apply:

• If the business raised money in the latter half of 2021 or the beginning of 2022 at a favourable period that is now past. According to Carta, if a firm obtained money during this time, it may be qualified for an equity adjustment that might reduce its worth.
• If the company’s expectations have undergone major revisions as a result of the “prolonged slump.”
• If the business intends to raise money in the near future.
• If the firm is reducing its cash outflow in light of the financing environment. In an email, Wilbur said that “if a firm has less accessible capital, it may need to be reviewed for the risk associated with inadequate financing.”
• If the business intends to dissolve within the following 12 months. The IPO market has slowed because of market instability, which has made the transition from private to public much more time-consuming, Wilbur said. “Companies certainly need to review any expectations on the anticipated time to depart, particularly if they operate in a sector like technology where the public stock market has seen a large decrease.

In other words, most firms should be reconsidering their 409A values, according to Carta, unless they are totally heads-down, bootstrapped, or have raised in 2020 and have no plan to raise again soon.

EquityZen’s Haslett predicts that more companies may seek assessments in the future, expecting to benefit from current market prices to get lower values, even if the data as of now does not show a trend.

“I believe there will soon be less stigma attached to it. Particularly employees [would say] “Oh, sure, this is better for me,” according to Haslett. Investors will likely say, “Oh sure, if public markets are down 40% or 60% or whatever, it’s not that strange that the privately held firms that have comparable characteristics are down that much as well,” if they first had sticker shock at seeing the reduced value.