After-Market Performance

When a company's board of directors decides it needs to raise money, it allows individuals to invest in the company by selling shares of stock. This is called the initial public offering (IPO), and it is usually greeted with much fanfare, juggling, and galaxy-wide celebrations originating with the company's board of directors. How the stock performs after the IPO is called after-market performance.

If the stock market were a middle school dance, the IPO would be the excitement experienced when a boy decides to ask a girl to dance. The after-market performance would include all the awkward seconds, sweaty palms, and thinking of things to say once the boy arrives. Although the IPO is necessary, it's what happens afterward that determines the ultimate outcome.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is an IPO?25 Views

00:00

And finance allah shmoop What is an i p o

00:07

Well this is a hippo and it has nothing to

00:09

do with an ipo Auras Normal humans pronounce it if

00:12

both well actually most people just spell it out I

00:15

po It stands for initial public offering In the three

00:19

words tell the story and i pl refers to a

00:21

company who's raising money by selling shares of itself to

00:25

the public for the first time a maiden voyage in

00:28

public funding if you will Whatever dot com has forty

00:35

million shares outstanding after three private rounds with venture capitalists

00:38

and private investors it wants to raise money to go

00:41

big internationally And for the first time it will offer

00:44

shares to joe and jill public And that means that

00:48

all of it shares will be tradable publicly on the

00:51

open market like on nasdaq or the new york stock

00:54

exchange That is the insiders early investors founders et cetera

00:58

will be able to just call their broker at schwab

01:01

or fidelity or wherever and sell their shares get liquid

01:05

and buy themselves a maserati because it's not what everyone

01:08

does after a nice meal So whatever dot com sells

01:11

ten million shares a twelve bucks each to raise one

01:13

hundred twenty million dollars which they can spend to build

01:16

out offices all over the world So yeah that's an

01:18

ai po and that's Why a company generally wants to

01:21

make shares available to the public because once you've made

01:24

an initial public offering and you make money off the

01:27

sales of your stock you khun by as many hippos

01:30

as you like and just remember to feed them three

01:33

times a day they get Cranky if they go too 00:01:35.158 --> [endTime] long in between No

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)