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It seems with the daily barrage of news, forecasts, predictions and commentaries by pundits, professionals and "sooth-sayers", perhaps no one has really realized the purpose of having a stock exchange in the first place ! The way the newspapers and publications go about it, you would not be blamed for mistaking the stock market as some national lottery game or gambling den, or even some fast-paced high-octane game where "The Winner Takes It All" (as ABBA sang it so succinctly some 30 years ago).
Nothing could be further from the truth though. The stock exchange's true purpose is for purely business reasons and it is merely one method which companies can use to raise funds for business expansion. Let's examine the main reasons in more detail:-
1) Private Companies sell shares to the public to raise funds for business expansion, using the stock exchange as a platform. They thus become "public" or "listed" companies from then on.
The main purpose of the stock market is to let aspiring companies sell shares to the general public in order to raise funds to expand their business. These are also known as "Initial Public Offerings" or IPO. A company needs to have some track record usually (3 years of consecutive revenue and profit growth) as well as fulfill several other conditions before it is allowed to list. Note that this is just ONE of the methods which a company can utilize to raise funds, others will include bank borrowings or issuance of debentures (bonds or notes) which are a form of debt. Listing on an exchange is a way of raising funds through equity, and it involves an expansion of a company's share capital. In a way, one can argue that it dilutes the stakes of existing owners but it also makes the company's shares liquid, thereby ascribing a market value to them almost as soon as the shares begin to trade.
2) Secondary Offering - Additional funds raised through a secondary offering of shares using the stock exchange as a medium
Even after being listed, companies can utilize the stock exchange (called the "capital markets") to issue more shares to raise even more funds for future business expansion, assuming there are buyers to take up the additional shares. This is known as a secondary offering and is most popular when share prices are HIGH, therefore this method is very common during a bull market. When share prices are high, companies can raise higher amounts of money through the issuance of less shares, thereby raising more capital with less dilution to existing shareholders. Notice now in the current bear market, no company is using a secondary offering to raise funds ? At the most, we hear of companies doing rights issues which ensures proportional participation in the company's fund raising and ownership. Read more...
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