Flipkart Group CEO, Binny Bansal had announced a 100 per cent buyback of vested employee stock options (ESOPs) following the e-commerce company’s $16 billion deal with Walmart. This came as good news for its employees who still possessed stocks /ownership in the Company.
Existing employees have been allowed to liquidate their ESOPs at $126-128 per unit. This is less than the per unit rate of $150 that had been earlier suggested.
Walmart recently purchased more than 52 per cent of Flipkart’s shares, which means 6,242,271 shares from its total of 11,947,026 shares.
Going by the per unit price of the shares, Flipkart’s total ESOPs are valued at approx. $1.5 billion. This means, Walmart will end up buying ESOPs worth $800 million from Flipkart’s workforce.
Current staff of at Flipkart have the option to liquidate half of their entrusted ESOPs on the heels of the Walmart-Flipkart deal. After a year, they can further sell another 25 per cent, and the remaining 25% two years after the first liquidation.
Flipkart had earlier bought back ESOPs worth over $100 million from over 3,000 of its existing and ex-employees as well as its fashion divisions Myntra and Jabong, and its payments division PhonePe.
Needless to say, the current beneficiaries include the CEO of Myntra and Jabong as well as the founder and CEO of PhonePe.
