Mr. Schwartz (1999) listed some advantages of going public in his article. For instance, going public could be easy for the company to access to capital market to raise capital via equity, debt or convertible securities. This also increases the liquidity of the company. Moreover, employees could be more motivated if company made some employee benefit policy based on stocks. At last, going public could increase company’s goodwill. Thus it would bring more business. In the case of “Jetblue airways IPO valuation”, the motivations of JetBlue’s management board also prove the advantages listed.
Based on some analysis of the case, three clear disadvantages reflect going public does not seem such fine. Firstly, the initial and ongoing expenses of going public are costly and multifarious. For example, before going public, some prerequisites should be fulfilled, and those prerequisites are complicated and costly. After going public, the company is not a private company and has obligations to disclosure annually or seasonally audited reports to public. Secondly, the management would over focus on their share price, not operations. To avoid declining share price is their primary objective, so they may forgo some business plan that can bring long term benefits but cause share price decreasing in a short time. Thirdly, going public via IPO is unreasonably difficult, so it may experience a long time. During this period, the company may lose some other opportunities.
To conclude, going public is a crucial decision for a company. So Jetblue also is