Features

Yahoo! Finance's IPO area is an overview of the current IPO market and helps you track the progress of companies from the first stages of registration through the company's first year of performance as a public company. This area is useful for finding information on little-known companies preparing for IPO, as well as tracking the IPO market as a whole.

The basic features include:

• Post-IPO Performance: This feature offers the 10 top and bottom price performers since IPO for the preceding 3 month, 6 month, and 1 year time period.
• IPO Lists: These tables allow you to search all IPOs filed in the last 12 months, including those that have already gone public, by company name, by industry, or by underwriter. Use the by-industry tables to compare how earlier IPOs in the same sector have faired on the public market.
• Latest IPO Events: This is the current calendar of the most recent IPO events. Here you can find filings, pricings, postponements, and withdrawals with easy links to more detailed information about each company, such as company profiles, news, and SEC filings.
• More: Registrations | Pricings | Withdrawals: These links take you to easy-to-navigate tables of all registrations, pricings, and withdrawals for the previous months, organized by month. Follow the "Prev. Month" link at the bottom of each table to view the preceding month's activities.
• Latest IPO News: This is the latest IPO news available on the entire IPO market. For a complete look at all the IPO News for the day or to search the IPO News archive, follow the IPO News link available under Resources on this Yahoo! Finance Initial Public Offerings page.

Background

Companies often find the need to raise new capital to support current operations, for expansion, or for the development of new business opportunities. An initial public offering (IPO) of stock is often chosen as the vehicle to raise a substantial amount of cash to implement a company's growth plans.

After an IPO, a company might still find the need to raise additional cash and might choose to have a secondary (also known as a follow-on) public offering. A follow-on offering is simply a public offering of newly issued equity securities by a publicly traded company.

Underwriters, hired by companies to help them issue new stock to the public, play a critical role in the IPO process. First, they provide the company with procedural and financial advice, then they buy the issue, and finally resell it to the public.

An underwriter's "value-added'' is its ability to gauge the public's receptivity to the new issue and properly price and place those shares. Traditionally, IPO shares have been distributed to institutional clients only.

To protect investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) requires that companies file a registration statement with them before they issue public offering shares. This registration statement contains detailed information about the issuing company and its business. The SEC reviews the registration statement and an accompanying prospectus to ensure that they conform to certain legal requirements.

When the SEC has reviewed these documents, the issue can be cleared for sale. (The SEC will neither approve nor disapprove an issue, nor will it guarantee the accuracy of disclosures; it will only clear it for sale.) Only when the issue has been cleared for sale (when registration has become "effective'') can the shares be priced and firm orders for them are accepted.

Update Frequency

IPO News is updated continuously throughout the day. All IPO event information, including IPO profiles, is updated with the most recent information on a daily basis. In-depth Profiles are updated weekly.

Before Reporting Errors

Information reported on the Yahoo! IPO site might not agree with other services because of (1) differing update frequencies; and (2) differing reporting methods. Ratios and statistics can be reported on a quarterly basis, a fiscal year basis, or a trailing 12-month basis. Corrections can be submitted to finance-admin@yahoo-inc.com.