S-1 registration statement

The S-1 is the single most information-dense document about a newly public company, because it is the first time the numbers are audited and public. The sections worth reading first are the risk factors, the principal shareholders table, the related-party transactions, and the historical financials that show what the growth rate actually was before the marketing started.

It is amended repeatedly. The amendment that adds the ipo-price-range and share count is the one that turns the filing into a tradeable event, and the final version becomes the prospectus.

Example: an S-1 shows revenue of $310M growing 41%, a net loss of $95M, and 40% of revenue from one customer. The concentration line is the risk that reprices the deal when that customer renegotiates.

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

Range versus trend. On the left price keeps bouncing between the same floor and ceiling, which is a range. On the right each high and each low is higher than the last, inside a pair of sloping lines called a channel.