What’s new? 

Carta improved how public company administrators can manage and designate equity plan stakeholders as Rule 144 Affiliates. Designating stakeholders as Affiliates ensures that their trade orders get reviewed before execution through a separate SEC Rule 144 due diligence workflow and that those trades are properly captured for Form 144 inclusion. Company administrators can also now easily access and review a filtered list of Rule 144 Affiliates from their Company Summary page. 

The management of Rule 144 Affiliate status has been separated from the Officer Code workflow to simplify this process and to ensure trading blackout periods for stakeholders with certain Officer Code(s) will not be impacted by one’s Rule 144 Affiliate status.

How does it work?

Company administrators can update Rule 144 Affiliate status by clicking on “Manage Employees” on the Company Summary page. 

From there, administrators can click on each stakeholder’s record and view their current Rule 144 Affiliate status. Administrators can also track the Effective Date of when a stakeholder was first marked as an Affiliate without leveraging Officer Codes.

To designate an individual as a Rule 144 Affiliate, administrators can check the box within the Update Stakeholder flow:

Easily manage, review, and designate public equity plan stakeholders as Rule 144 Affiliates to ensure trading compliance via an improved workflow.

With the improved Rule 144 Affiliate workflow, company administrators can:

• Easily manage, review, and designate equity plan stakeholders as Rule 144 Affiliates;
• Be assured that Affiliate trades go through the proper reviews and are included on Form 144; and
• Set blackout trading periods for certain Officer Code(s) without an impact to a stakeholder’s Rule 144 Affiliate status.

Start using the improved Rule 144 Affiliate status workflow now!

Do you want to update Rule 144 Affiliate status for individual stakeholders or in bulk? Refer to this support article for more information. 

What's new?

Issuers running a secondary transaction, such as a tender offer, through Carta Liquidity on the CartaX ATS can now access on demand real-time seller participation data during a live transaction via the Issuer Transaction Dashboard (“Dashboard”). 

How does it work?

Issuers can access their brokerage account online and click on their live transaction, where they will see their Dashboard. The “Participation overview” tab includes three key sections:

• Participation breakdown: The pie chart provides a summary of the transaction’s subscription rate by Relationship type. Issuers can quickly see how close the transaction is to being fully subscribed. Relationship type is determined during the transaction’s setup period.
• Participant engagement: The bar chart details the number of sellers who (a) have been invited to the transaction, (b) viewed the transaction, and (c) decided to participate by tendering shares.
• Relationship summary: The table summarizes the participation level across all Relationship types. Details include the participation rate, shares tendered, and the notional value of tendered shares.

The table and charts on this page will update in real-time during the live transaction. 

The “Transaction overview” tab of the Dashboard will be accessible at the close of the offering period and provides a summary of the transaction, including a breakdown of deposits made into the Issuer’s brokerage account. Issuers will be able to access and download their Trade Confirmation and Transaction Summary reports here as well.  

Save time and gain real-time transaction and participation data on demand with the Issuer Transaction Dashboard

The Issuer Transaction Dashboard will: 

• Give you real-time transaction and participation data on demand during a live transaction;
• Provide you with full oversight and enhance your foresight over the transaction’s results related to filling a buy order; and 
• Make it easier for you to provide your team with updates on a transaction and Relationship type level, preserving the confidentiality of individual seller activity.

Reach out to Carta to get the process started

Do you want to run a tender offer or other private secondary transaction with a fully-integrated cap table experience? Reach out to Carta Liquidity’s Corporate Coverage team at company_coverage@cartacapitalmarkets.com to figure out the best path towards liquidity. 

Disclaimer: Carta, through its wholly owned broker-dealer subsidiary, Carta Capital Markets, LLC, offers a streamlined experience for executing pre-negotiated stock transfers, tender offers, and other secondary liquidity transactions. Carta Capital Markets, LLC is a member of FINRA/SIPC.

What's new?

Carta has made it easier for private companies running a tender offer to invoke IRS Revenue Procedure 2002-50, which is applicable to certain transactions involving the exercise of options and sale of the resulting securities during a transaction on the same day. This procedure allows for the exclusion of those same day option sales from Form 1099-B reporting if certain conditions are met. For example, this may apply to cashless exercised options in connection with a secondary transaction on Carta where there is no capital gain (Sale Price = Fair Market Value).

How does it work?

To make a Revenue Procedure 2002-50 election on an applicable transaction, company administrators may request an Officer Certificate template from Carta to complete and get signed by a Company Officer who has the authority to make decisions on the tax treatment of cashless exercises in a tender offer.

Fig 1: Sample of an Officer Certificate

The completed form can then be returned to Carta, who will then trigger the Revenue Procedure. 

Any employee whose transactions on Carta were excluded from 1099-B reporting as a result of Revenue Procedure 2002-50 will, if applicable, receive a supplemental Disclosure Statement detailing the fees and gross proceeds on cashless exercises of options so they can complete their Form 8949 reporting. Compensatory income from cashless exercises is reported as ordinary income on the W-2.  

This statement will be delivered electronically by February 15th of the following year in the same manner as all other tax documents on Carta. No such statement will be generated if the employee was not charged any fees by Carta.

Fig 2: Sample of IRS Revenue Procedure 2002-50 Disclosure Statement

The company administrator can also generate a new report of all the Disclosure Statements issued after the transaction. The Revenue Procedure Disclosure Statements Report will assist in auditing transactions ahead of the tax season to ensure completeness and accuracy for tax filing purposes. The report can be found under your Reports section in Carta.   

Fig 3: Sample of Disclosure Statements Report

Make tax reporting easier for same-day option exercises and sales during a tender offer by invoking Revenue Procedure 2002-50

The Revenue Procedure feature will:

• Remove an employee’s burden to reconcile their Form 1099-B and Form W-2 when determining their Taxable Income after a same day option exercise and sale
• Reduce the risk of paying capital gains tax on proceeds that were already taxed as ordinary income

Reach out to Carta to get the process started

Is your company running a tender offer? If so, the Revenue Procedure 2002-50 will be enabled on the platform after returning a completed and signed Officer Certificate to Carta. Companies who ran a tender offer previously in 2022 can retroactively upload the appropriate Officer Certificate to benefit from this feature until the end of 2022. Please contact your CSM or Liquidity representative for more information.

What's new?

After reviewing customer feedback, Carta made several user experience enhancements in the Form 3921 dashboard.

The enhanced user experience also allows company stock administrators to download the Manage Stakeholder Details report to review all stakeholder records at once instead of in a paginated view within the Administrator Experience. Companies with 50+ stakeholders now have enhanced filter and sorting capabilities (e.g, select one or multiple years to download the Stakeholder details ledger) to better analyze historical data.

There is a new tab for “Exclude Transactions” for further flexibility if company administrators need to suppress reporting on individual option exercises. 

How does it work?

The new Form 3921 Dashboard is available now to all companies subscribed to this feature.

Reach out to Carta to get the process started

Reach out to your CSM to enable Form 3921 reporting if you are interested in upgrading your subscription. Public Market companies will have this enabled by default.

What's new?

Upon going public, issuers must communicate the share positions held on their former cap table to their new public Transfer Agent. Carta’s Mass Issuance report captures key information that Transfer Agents in order to validate and reflect public share ownership following an IPO. 

The Mass Issuance report aggregates pertinent cap table and tax-related (e.g, cost basis) information, typically found in multiple reports, into one export file containing information required by the Transfer Agent. Now issuers can easily export ownership information for communication to their Transfer Agent in one step.  

The Mass Issuance report includes additional information on the Issuer's stock program shares to make it easier for the Issuer to move the eligible portion of its stock ledger back to an equity management provider - such as Carta - from the Transfer Agent. This helps preserve critical tax information while facilitating the delivery of public shares to the stakeholder's Carta portfolio for trading.

How does it work?

Experience a secure and smooth data transition as you move your private equity records to a public Transfer Agent. 

The Mass Issuance report:

• allows for the easy communication of ownership data to a public Transfer Agent in one file ahead of an IPO, SPAC or direct listing; and
• includes additional fields needed for when you permission your Transfer Agent to send your public stock ledger to a public equity management provider of choice - such as Carta.

Reach out to Carta to get the process started

Are you preparing to go public? Reach out to Carta’s public markets team (carta.public@carta.com) to begin planning your IPO journey.

The Mass Issuance report can be found under your Reports section in Carta.   

What's new?

Customers wishing to allow their shareholders to sell a portion of their holdings prior to a traditional 180-day lockup expiration can now control early lockup release programs through Carta. With Carta’s early lockup release functionality, your company can specify the quantity of shares each shareholder can sell during a specified period. 

Carta’s Public Market Equity Management Services team will work with companies to determine: 

1. shareholder eligibility for the early lock-up release period
2. the start and end date of the liquidity period
3. how many shares each individual may sell during the period

After gathering this information, Carta will then work with the customer to complete an import template, which will be uploaded to Carta's public platform. Eligible shareholders will now be able to see the quantity of shares they can trade, what they’ve already traded, and what portion of shares is still remaining. 

Allow your employees to begin trading company shares Day 1 post-IPO

The early lockup release feature:

• allows your employees to sell prior to the standard 180-day lockup period while enforcing the terms of your company’s early lockup release program; and
• makes it easy to instruct participation eligibility and quantity limits for all shareholders.

Figure 1: Shareholders can monitor the number of shares they can sell during the early lockup release.

Figure 2: Shareholders are limited to the quantity of shares that they are allowed to sell per the rules of the early lockup release. Quantities can be set specific to an individual.

Trade limits apply across asset types. The sale of long stock, in addition to cashless option transactions, will count against the shareholder’s total allowed quantity to trade, ensuring that the stakeholder won’t oversell per the terms of the early lockup release.

Reach out to Carta to get the process started

Reach out to Carta’s Public Markets team (carta.public@carta.com) to begin customizing an early lockup release benefit for your employees ahead of an exit.

Who This Affects

Users without a verified secondary email address

What’s New

Additional emails are required to assist users with providing a secondary login credential in case access to their primary email address is lost. As part of our efforts to improve our clients' account security, we are updating the process of adding and verifying your additional email address. 

As part of this release, we will be notifying all users without a verified additional email address to add or verify the email they have listed. This subset of users will be receiving an email notification, as well as an outstanding task in their Carta account’s task manager. 

Timing

• This update is available to 25% of randomly selected Carta users
• General availability for all users by the end of Q2

General partners now have the ability to view and track capital calls from the Carta Android app. Investment firms can now track the progress of on-going and completed calls along with investor details, on the go, straight from the Carta mobile app.

Who this affects

• Fund administration clients

Supported platforms

• Android (Previously available on iOS)

What's new

Fund Administration clients can now access their capital call details and investor information from the Carta Android app.

• The home screen now provides a summary of active capital calls with the ability to view individual call details.
• Navigating to a capital call allows you to view further call and investor details along with a full investor list which can be filtered by Paid and Unpaid calls.
• The Fund Details page now also provides a capital summary and the ability to view a list of Active, Drafted, and Completed calls.

Carta users will now be able to perform a Cashless Hold Exercise and Cashless Sell Exercise on the mobile app. 

Who this affects

• Public Markets Users

Supported Platforms

• iOS and Android

What’s new

Users with holdings in public companies on Carta will now be able to exercise and sell their shares via a Cashless Hold or Cashless Sell transaction while on-the-go through the Carta mobile app. These features were previously available to users via desktop, and this launch closes the previously existing gap in functionality between the Carta web experience and the Carta mobile app. 

Carta mobile app users will now be able to login using a web-browser on iOS and Android. Web-login gives us the benefits of browser-based authentication, and better security, without disrupting the user experience.

Who this affects

Employees and Investors

Supported Platforms

iOS & Android

What’s New

In an effort to bring login and authentication together across all Carta platforms, we are launching browser-based login on mobile. The web-login experience will use Safari on iOS and a default browser on Android.