 Initial public offering IPO or stock market launch is a type of public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also retail individual investors, an IPO is underwritten by one or more investment banks, who also arrange for the shares to be listed. On one or more stock exchanges. After this process, colloquially known as floating or going public, a privately held company is transformed into a public company. Initial public offerings can be used to raise new equity capital for the company concerned, to monetize the investments of private shareholders such as company founders or private equity investors, and to enable easy trading of existing holdings or future capital raising by becoming publicly traded enterprises. After the IPO, shares traded freely in the open market are known as the free float. Stock exchanges stipulate a minimum free float both in absolute terms the total value as determined by the share price multiplied by the number of shares sold to the public and as a proportion of the total share capital i.e., the number of shares sold to the public divided by. The total shares outstanding. Although IPO offers many benefits, there are also significant costs involved, chiefly those associated with the process such as banking and legal fees, and the ongoing requirement to disclose important and sometimes sensitive information. Details of the proposed offering are disclosed to potential purchasers in the form of a lengthy document known as a prospectus. Most companies undertake an IPO with the assistance of an investment banking firm acting in the capacity of an underwriter. Underwriters provide several services, including help with correctly assessing the value of shares share price and establishing the public market for shares initial sale. Alternative methods such as the Dutch auction have also been explored and applied for several IPOs.