An Initial Public Offering (IPO) is a vehicle for a privately held company to go public. It usually ends up as seminal event in the company’s history. The company starts off by issuing a specific number of share certificates at a specific price to investors. Once it gets listed on a specific stock market, the company’s shares can be bought and sold by individual investors.

In order to get to this point where the company gets listed, there are a huge number of requirements that the company has to fulfill. There are compliance issues, filings to regulatory bodies, and disclosures of the company’s financial condition. Once fulfilled, the benefits of a well subscribed IPO are massive and the company gets a big boost, in terms of cash and reputation.

The biggest benefit of an IPO is obviously the massive infusion of capital for financing ongoing operations and planned expansion of the business. It improves the company’s liquidity position and helps reduce debt. There is also a big uptick in brand recognition and trust in the company’s products and services.

The first concrete step towards an IPO is for the company to file a registration statement with the SEC. This statement, along with a prospectus for the IPO, tells the company’s entire story. It helps investors (and the SEC) decide whether the company is a good horse to bet on.

This process can be significantly eased with the help of the underwriters. It is their job to assist the company with the public offering. They’ll help the company move from being a private concern to a public company whose executives need to answer to the Board and every shareholder. But most importantly, they make a judgment about the IPO share price and the number of shares to be issued, and other aspects such as the timing and the market.

Once the IPO goes through, the company has certain new responsibilities. This includes making public the quarterly financial results, filing statements with the SEC for anything major that impacts the company and its operations, and the AGM. At the stockholders‘ meeting, important issues are discussed and voted upon, including the composition of the Board and the top-level management. This is one reason why many companies hire new mangers after an IPO, to deal with issues specific to public companies.

How an IPO fares mostly depends on the company’s prospects and that of its sector. But IPOs fail all the time inspite of having sound basics and strong revenue models. There are many factors in play here, including the share pricing and quantity, the market and the timing of the IPO.

As an example, consider Canada, where an IPO won’t be able to reach the size or price that an offering in the US markets can fetch. The Canadian market has a significantly lower threshold for risk. In Europe, there are even more issues that need to be considered, like the economic conditions in each member state of the EU which affect every market in Europe.

Before 2001, when dotcoms were still in vogue, anyone with a website could file for an Initial Public Offering and watch the millions piling up as the markets kept going up. What investors want now is a safe company with lots of assets to its name and long term growth prospects. For any business that can traverse this long road to IPO success, there’s a huge reward waiting at the other end.

In order to grow and expand, many companies will go through the IPO How process and make an Initial Public Offering (IPO) to the general public. A new IPO Prospectus valuation is usually made, and Canadian IPOs are becoming more common nowadays.