Next up on the IPO block is Via Transportation, a technology company that provides software and services to improve public transportation networks for cities, transit agencies, schools, and corporations. Their platform uses advanced algorithms to create and manage on-demand and dynamic transit systems, including micro transit, paratransit, and school transportation.

Let’s take a look to see how the potential returns look for investors and employees. Please note that we will be using the opening day IPO price of $46 for this analysis. Most employees/investors will have a 6-month lockup period, so their actual returns may vary depending on how the market views the company. These are certainly only preliminary numbers, as we’ve learned from Circle and Coreweave, a lot can happen in the lockup period.

Below is a graph of Via’s preferred and common stock pricing over time taken from the S1 they filed. Please note that we only include rounds and data point priced from 2018 onwards.  

Preferred Stock: How did the Investors do?

Series A (23.29x, Mar 2014), Series B (10.48x, Mar 2015), Series C (4.29x, Apr 2016), these investors all did well, especially the Series A and B who handedly beat the S&P 500 which had a 3.52x and a 3.17x return in the same time period. The Series C investors did beat the S&P 500 with a 4.29x compared to a 3.13x, although they probably would have liked to blow it out of the water with an almost 10-year hold period.

Series D (2.24x, July 2017), Here is where it gets tough, the series D investors lost to the S&P 500 which had a 2.60x in the same period. This one was a surprising loss for investors, because they came in before valuations got truly frothy in 2020.  

Series E (1.32x),  Series F (1.11x), Both of these investors got beat by the S&P 500 which had a 2.66x return and a 1.69x in the same time period.

Series G, Series G-1 (1.01x), these investors are also regretting this one. They’re barely getting their money back while also losing to the S&P which had a 1.41x and a 1.58x in the same timeframe.

Overall the early stage investors did pretty well, but this is a lousy return for all the later stage ones.

Common Stock: How did the Employees do?

Employees time! Below are the strike prices (the price employees pay to exercise their options) we could find at certain dates according to the S1. We also put the company size (Emp #) at each strike price so you can get a feel for how many people were getting each strike price. This also includes the cost to exercise 1,000 shares, and what those shares are worth today. All exercise costs assume $0 in taxes, which is unfortunately rarely the case, but this allows us to compare these gross amounts apples to apples - as if they are being exercised and sold today. Typically, there will be either short or long-term capital gains associated with the sale (on top of AMT or income tax at the time of exercise).

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It's great to be an employee. It’s a little staggering just how much of a discount the employees were getting compared to the investors on the first graph. In most cases employees received a price that was less than a third of what the investors paid in the same time period. This shows that the independent company doing the 409A for the common stock had less conviction than the preferred investors.

These discounts showed up in the returns, and they speak for themselves. You can see that employees who started in June of 2018 got a 7x return, while the Series D investors who came in a year earlier only got a 2.24x. In fact, even the employees who started in December of 2024 beat the Series D investors with a 2.32x, that’s insane!

A couple key takeaways:

1.     We’ve reviewed a few IPOs this year where investors are losing out to the S&P, but this seems to be the first where a round well prior to 2020 is included in this list. That shows Via’s poor returns for investors may be more than just the inflated pricing of the early 2020s, and more a company that didn’t grow nearly as quickly as expected.

2.     In contrast to the bad later round of returns by investors, this might be some of the best discounts we’ve seen employees get compared to the preferred price. This is a good demonstration of how attractive employees’ stock options can be at a startup, even on a company where many investors did poorly.

3.     It will be interesting to see if the late-stage investors get bailed out by the lockup or if their returns become even worse. This feels like a company where a downturn in the market could really affect the stock price. As of this writing the price is holding firm around $49.75.  

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