Initial Public Offering Services
Bringing your company public gives it access to a larger pool of capital. The increased transparency also helps with obtaining favorable credit terms for borrowing funds and enables employees to participate in the company’s growth via equity compensation. However, the initial process of becoming a publicly-traded company is time-consuming and resource intensive. It requires extensive financial analysis, reporting and disclosures. It isn’t a decision to be taken lightly as it can dramatically impact your business and your shareholders.
Once you’ve vetted the process with your outside legal counsel, you will need to engage an investment bank to facilitate the initial public offering (IPO). The investment bank will evaluate your firm through financial analysis and come up with an IPO valuation, price for the shares, a date for issuance and much more.
The underwriter (a team of investment banks) markets the IPO by approaching institutional investors and arranging commitments to buy your IPO shares. This pre-marketing helps the underwriters estimate demand for your share issuance and establish the final IPO price.
During this process you must comply with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations, including the one-time window commonly known as “quiet periods.” The quiet period is the time between when you file your S-1 registration statement and when SEC staff declares it effective. During this time you must not discuss your IPO or promote the pending public listing with investors or the media.
After your IPO, you’ll need to provide quarterly audited financial statements for each fiscal quarter and an annual report to the SEC. These reports are mandatory for all publicly traded companies and must be reviewed and approved by SEC staff before filing.
When you’re ready to market your IPO, you will need to create marketing materials and hold investor meetings, often called road shows. During these events, the underwriters will ask questions and receive feedback from prospective investors to get an indication of interest for your shares. The underwriters will then work with you to determine the best IPO price.
Once you’ve met all the requirements for your IPO, the SEC will review and approve your prospectus and allow you to list on an exchange. In addition, you’ll need to create a board of directors and processes for reporting auditable financial information every quarter.
With connected reporting from Workiva, you can reduce the amount of time you spend managing changes and version control, editing narrative and tying numbers for a faster and more precise review. This will free you up to focus on presenting the value of your company. Workiva’s dedicated service team can help with the entire IPO lifecycle, from prospectus creation to filing and printing. initial public offering services