When a privately held company goes public via an Initial Public Offering, it is one of the most significant milestones in the company’s entire history. Way it works is that the company issues share certificates to investors and gets listed on a chosen stock market. After the listing, the company’s shares can be traded on the market.

Before this can happen, there are a huge number of compliance issues, and the SEC has very strict regulatory requirements. Once the company manages to get through all the hassle, the benefits can be unthinkable massive. Over-subscribed IPOs in any market in the world tend to catapult the company into the top bracket virtually overnight.

The large amount of cash from an IPO comes in handy for bankrolling current operations and financing future projects. The best part of it is that it removes liquidity bottlenecks and reduces the company’s debt. The company enjoys significantly higher name recognition and greater trust from customers and corporate partners.

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.

Underwriters and the company’s accountants are required to work together to fulfill these regulatory requirements. They will provide the management with advice on shifting from a private decision making process to a public company answerable to the board and shareholders. The most important thing the underwriters do is help decide the price and number of shares that the market can absorb.

There are significant post-IPO reporting and disclosure requirements for public companies. Publishing quarterly financial results and holding an annual shareholder meeting are two such examples. One big area where change is almost inevitable after an IPO is the management. Every company that goes public ends up hiring new executives who have experience in managing large public companies.

The success of an IPO is mainly based on how sound the finances, growth prospects and revenue model, not to mention the viability of the sector the company belongs to. But many IPOs have crashed and burned even with all this. Reasons why an IPO might fail include bad timing, over-pricing and/or too big a size, and choosing the wrong market.

In Canada, for example, IPOs tend to be smaller than the ones in the US. They are also slightly under-priced because the market doesn’t have the same strong appetite for risk. European IPOs have to look at a lot more factors and have a smaller window, since problems in any EU member nation can affect markets in all the other nations.

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.