Public offering, also known as an Initial Public Offering (IPO), is a type of securities offering in which shares of a company are sold to the public, usually on a stock exchange. The ALE solution for this term is an acronym for the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Regulation A , which allows companies to offer and sell securities to the public without having to register with the SEC. This type of offering is often used by smaller companies that may not have the resources to go through the full registration process.