IPO

American

abbreviation

initial public offering: a company's first stock offering to the public.

IPO British

abbreviation

independent publicly owned company
stock exchange initial public offering

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

IPO Cultural

Abbreviation for i nitial p ublic o ffering; the first issuance of shares in itself by a public company.

Etymology

Origin of IPO

First recorded in 1975–80

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

That would make the Jersey Mike’s IPO bigger than other recent restaurant IPOs.

From MarketWatch • Apr. 20, 2026

Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays and UBS Investment Bank are the lead book-running managers for the IPO, according to Cerebras.

From MarketWatch • Apr. 17, 2026

Madison Dearborn Partners-backed drone maker Aevex went public in an IPO, valuing the key player in Ukraine’s fight at over $2 billion.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 17, 2026

Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays and UBS Investment Bank are the lead book-running managers for the IPO, according to Cerebras.

From MarketWatch • Apr. 17, 2026

The other, he said, are American investment banks and financial services companies, which often need to prepare glossy pamphlets with graphs to illustrate the benefits of an IPO or a proposed merger.

From "The World Is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023