Читать книгу Reading Financial Reports For Dummies - Lita Epstein - Страница 54

If a company goes public, its primary benefit is that it gains access to additional capital (more cash), which can be critical if it's a high-growth business that needs money to take advantage of its growth potential. A secondary benefit is that company owners can become millionaires, or even billionaires, overnight if the initial public offering (IPO) is successful.

Being a public company has a number of other benefits:

 New corporate cash: At some point, a growing company usually maxes out its ability to borrow funds, and it must find people willing to invest in the business. Selling stock to the general public can be a great way for a company to raise cash without being obligated to pay interest on the money.

 Owner diversification: People who start a new business typically put a good chunk of their assets into starting the business and then reinvest most of the profits in the business in order to grow the company. Frequently, founders have a large share of their assets tied up in the company. Selling shares publicly allows owners to take out some of their investment and diversify their holdings in other investments, which reduces the risks to their personal portfolios.

 Increased liquidity: Liquidity is a company's ability to quickly turn an asset into cash (if it isn't already cash). People who own shares in a closely held private company may have a lot of assets but little chance to actually turn those assets into cash. Selling privately owned shares of stock is very difficult. Going public gives the stock a set market value and creates more potential buyers for the stock.

 Company value: Company owners benefit by knowing their firm's worth for a number of reasons. If one of the key owners dies, state and federal inheritance tax appraisers must set the company's value for estate tax purposes. Many times, these values are set too high for private companies, which can cause all kinds of problems for other owners and family members. Going public sets an absolute value for the shares held by all company shareholders and prevents problems with valuation. Also, businesses that want to offer shares of stock to their employees as incentives find that recruiting with this incentive is much easier when the stock is sold on the open market.