Should I sell my ESPPs if I'm quitting?

[jeromedawg]

Hey guys,

If I have some existing ESPPs (with disqualifying dispositions) in my UBS-linked ESPP account for my company, should I go ahead and sell those off to cash out? The company is undergoing an acquisition by a private company now too, so its stock will cease to exist very possibly sometime early next year. I was originally avoiding selling them because of the disqualifying disposition but now I'm wondering if I just should. The stock price is still higher than what they cost via the ESPP but who knows if the stock will dip any more. Should I just bite the bullet and sell off what I've got?

[geekette]

I suspect your stock is with the same company my DH retired from...  We've been slowly cashing out of both ESPP and stock options the last couple years.  If your income will be higher next year, you might want to hop to it and sell!  It doesn't sound like your shares will have enough time to "age" to be a qualifying disposition (2 years from the beginning of the ESPP period).

I want no part of that tracking stock, so we'll be selling the rest early next year.

[jeromedawg]

I suspect your stock is with the same company my DH retired from...  We've been slowly cashing out of both ESPP and stock options the last couple years.  If your income will be higher next year, you might want to hop to it and sell!  It doesn't sound like your shares will have enough time to "age" to be a qualifying disposition (2 years from the beginning of the ESPP period).

I want no part of that tracking stock, so we'll be selling the rest early next year.

LOL yep - pretty sure it's the same company. Your tracking stock comment gave it away. I'm not too fond of the idea either. I'm losing my vesting for end of January too since my last day is tomorrow but I'm fine with at least getting all my money back from the contributions I made. I think my income will be slightly higher next year, so I guess I should go ahead and sell then. Yea, the oldest ESPPs were issued back in July of 2014, so that's kind of a long way out. And I'm guessing that if I don't sell them now and if the acquisition completes and trading of the stock halts, I'll probably be in a forced-sale position where whatever is in my ESPP will be cashed out at the very last price the stock was out before they close all trading on it... is that right? I guess there's some risk (or hope?) that the stock would go up but it's probably not worth the risk

[geekette]

I believe once the sale goes through, you'll get $24.05/share, plus .111 shares of the tracking stock/share.  Meh.

[jeromedawg]

Ugh, I tried dumping before year end on 12/30 (and definitely before market close) and it appeared like the transaction went through but I checked again yesterday and there is *no* record of the transaction! I have no idea what happened... not happy with UBS.

[seattlecyclone]

The difference in taxes between qualified distributions and non-qualified distributions on ESPP shares usually isn't that great, especially if the stock hasn't increased much since the beginning of the offering period. If you have shares that will cross the qualifying threshold in the next couple of months you might as well wait, otherwise cash out of the sinking ship ASAP.

[jeromedawg]

The difference in taxes between qualified distributions and non-qualified distributions on ESPP shares usually isn't that great, especially if the stock hasn't increased much since the beginning of the offering period. If you have shares that will cross the qualifying threshold in the next couple of months you might as well wait, otherwise cash out of the sinking ship ASAP.

The earliest one of my ESPPs would qualify is in July but the company is ending the plan preemptively end of Jan. I should just cash out now. I wanted to cash out before year-end for tax purposes but it seems UBS screwed things up and didn't process my order quickly enough. So now I'll have to sell now and push my cap gains up for 2016 :(

[jeromedawg]

Ugh, UBS is useless. They pretty much don't know what happened with the order and claim that I probably didn't hit submit, even though I have a screenshot showing I had gotten past that point. Really unreliable. Either way, it doesn't sound like they could do anything but what a screw-up; I should have just sold it as soon as I could before year end versus at the last minute. I thought I had until 12/31 to do everything but 12/30 was the last active day to trade.

Now I have to deal with the cap gains for this year. And the stock price keeps dropping (it's 50c lower than what it was when I tried to push the order through last Wednesday). 

[jeromedawg]

Well, now the stock has dropped below one of my ESPPs but is still above the other two ESPPs - should I just dump it for the other two and wait it out for the one that is currently at a loss? The stock has dropped dramatically in the past week since the open of the New Year.

I still can't believe UBS screwed things up for me.