What Should You Do Before Your IPO Lock-Up Period Ends?
October 7, 2026
What Should You Do Before Your IPO Lock-Up Period Ends? (Quick Answer)
Before your IPO lock-up period ends, develop a plan for how your company equity can support your financial goals.
Start by determining what you want your wealth to accomplish. From there, you can evaluate how much stock you may want to sell or continue to hold, estimate the potential tax impact, and decide how proceeds will be used or invested.
Having this roadmap in place before shares become eligible for sale can help you make more deliberate decisions when the opportunity arrives.
To learn more about how lock-up periods work, typical timelines and restrictions that may continue after expiration, please see our post, “What Is a Lock-Up Period? What Pre-IPO Employees Should Know Before Selling Shares.”
Why You Should Plan Before Your Lock-Up Period Ends
For employees of a newly public company, a lock-up expiration can represent an important transition. Equity accumulated over the years may soon become a source of meaningful personal liquidity, but unlocking that value requires more than waiting until you can sell.
Stock prices can move quickly following an IPO, and decisions around taxes, vesting, and future equity can add complexity. Building a plan in advance will provide a roadmap for what you intend to do with your shares before market movements or other factors have the potential to influence the decision.
1. What Do You Want This Wealth to Accomplish?
Your company equity isn’t simply an investment; it can be a resource for accomplishing important financial goals that matter most to you.
Whether it’s buying a new home, funding your children’s education, or creating greater career flexibility, putting a dollar amount and timeline around those priorities can help translate the value of your equity into tangible goals.
Once you’ve established your goals and priorities, the real planning begins. Questions you may find yourself asking include: How much liquidity would those goals require? How much could remain invested for the future? And what role should your company stock continue to play?
Starting with the goal provides context for nearly every decision that follows.
2. How Much Company Stock Do You Want to Continue Holding?
Once you’ve defined what you want your wealth to accomplish, you can evaluate how much company stock you may want to sell and how much you’re comfortable continuing to hold.
You will need to examine your total exposure to your employer—not just the shares becoming eligible for sale. Your total holdings may include unvested RSUs, stock options, future equity grants, and even your salary and bonus.
Scenario planning can help put that exposure into perspective. What happens to your financial plan if the stock appreciates significantly? What happens if it declines? How would selling different portions of your available shares affect your ability to accomplish your goals?
The objective isn’t to predict the stock price but to understand how much of your financial future is dependent on it.
3. What Impact Will Taxes Have on Your Equity?
Once you have a potential sale strategy in mind, determine what those shares could actually provide after taxes.
Tax consequences can vary based on your type of equity compensation, cost basis, holding period, previous option exercises, and broader income and tax situation.
Tax obligations can also arise at several points in the equity lifecycle—not only when you sell shares.
Before your lock-up expires, a Freestone Client Advisor can work alongside your tax professional to model different scenarios and estimate potential after-tax proceeds. Understanding those numbers in advance can help determine whether your proposed strategy provides enough liquidity to accomplish the goals you’ve identified.
4. Create a Roadmap for Your Equity
Your lock-up expiration is only one date in a much larger equity timeline.
Before it arrives, map out important dates and decisions, including:
- Vesting dates
- Lock-up expiration
- Company trading windows and blackout periods
- Option expiration dates
- Potential tax payments
Pairing this calendar with a plan for how you intend to handle your shares can make future decisions more deliberate.
For example, you may establish guidelines for how much company stock you’re comfortable holding, when shares may be sold and where proceeds should go. As additional equity vests, you can revisit those guidelines rather than starting from scratch each time.
5. How Will You Put the Proceeds to Work?
Ideally, you’ll know where the proceeds are going before you sell a single share.
Some capital may be earmarked for taxes or a near-term goal, while other assets may have a much longer investment horizon.
Consider the proceeds alongside your remaining company stock, future equity compensation, existing investments and financial goals. This can help you build an investment strategy around your entire financial picture rather than deciding what to do with a large cash balance after the sale.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I start planning for my lock-up period to end?
Ideally, planning begins well before shares become eligible for sale. This provides time to define your goals, understand upcoming equity and tax events, evaluate your company stock exposure and determine how much you may want to sell.
Should I sell my company stock when my lock-up period ends?
Not necessarily. How much you sell or continue to hold should depend on what you want the wealth to accomplish, your overall company stock exposure, tax situation and broader financial plan.
How much company stock should I sell after an IPO?
There is no universal percentage. It is important to start by identifying your financial goals and liquidity needs, then model how different sale amounts could affect taxes, concentration risk and your ability to accomplish those goals.
How can I prepare for stock-price volatility after an IPO?
Rather than making decisions based solely on short-term stock-price movements, consider establishing a strategy before your shares become eligible for sale. Modeling different stock-price and sale scenarios can help you understand in advance how different outcomes could affect your financial plan.
What should I do with the proceeds after selling company stock?
Ideally, decide this before you sell. Some proceeds may be reserved for taxes or near-term goals, while other assets may be invested for the long term based on your liquidity needs, time horizon and financial goals.
Final Thoughts
The weeks and months before your IPO lock-up period ends can be an important planning window.
Start by defining what you want your equity to accomplish. Then build a roadmap around that goal—how much stock you intend to hold or sell, what you could receive after taxes, important upcoming equity dates and how proceeds will be used or invested.
A Freestone Client Advisor can help model different scenarios and coordinate with your tax professionals to align your equity decisions with your investments, liquidity needs and broader financial plan.
The goal is to have a strategy for your equity before the opportunity to sell arrives—so your decisions are driven by your financial plan, not the stock price on any given day.
Important Disclosures: This article is not intended to provide and you should not rely upon it for accounting, legal, tax, or investment advice or recommendations. We are not making any specific recommendations regarding any financial planning, investment, or tax strategy, and you should not make any financial planning, investment, or tax decisions based on the information in this article. This article is intended to be educational in nature and to discuss a few limited aspects of very complex legislation or other complex subject matters. This article is not a comprehensive or complete summary of considerations regarding its subject. Where we obtain information from third party sources, we believe such sources to be reliable but we do not guarantee their accuracy. We recognize that individual circumstances vary and the opinions expressed in this article may not be appropriate for everyone. Please consult with a Freestone client advisor, accountant, or lawyer regarding options tailored for you. Please note that Freestone does not approve or endorse any third-party content hyperlinked to in this article.