The empirical debate on the effects of the initial public offering (IPO) never subsides. Financing through the initial public offering of shares is one of the ways to raise funds for the current or development needs of the company. An IPO is the fi rst public offering of a company’s shares to potential investors and takes place on the primary capital market, ie the stock exchange. This paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of listing and delisting. The subject of the paper refers to the analysis of the effects of the initial public offering. The aim of this paper is to analyze all relevant factors that affect the result of the initial public offering of shares, to identify the motives for which companies decide to IPO, but to analyze the motives and effects of the process of delisting the company from the stock exchange. The research used methods of analysis, synthesis, deduction, as well as selected tools of business and fi nancial analysis. Secondary data sources, such as scientifi c and professional literature, and publicly available statistical databases were also used. In the second part of this research, the relationship between the number of listed joint-stock companies in the country GDP per capita, population, market capitalization and financial market development index is examined. The results show that there is a weak relationship between the number of listed companies and the number of residents and the number of listed companies and the fi nancial market development index, but that there is no relationship between the number of listed companies and GDP per capita, ie the size of the market.