Going public

Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, measures the value of goods and services of a country during a set time frame, such as every quarter. GDP shows how a country’s economy is tracking - whether it’s slowing or growing. Policymakers, investors, and businesses use GDP to understand a country’s economic health and growth or decline, and make decisions based on it. GDP can be calculated in several ways:

• Production approach: The combined value of all the goods and services produced by a country
• Expenditure approach: How consumers, businesses and the government are spending and investing, and includes net exports (the difference between exports and imports) and shows a country’s economic size and growth
• Income approach: Adds up the income earned by households, businesses and the government’s tax revenue

Aotearoa NZ uses the production and expenditure approaches to determine GDP. Read about how GDP is used to declare a recession.

Going public is another way of saying a company is going through an initial public offering (IPO) It’s a more colloquial term to describe how a company is transitioning from private ownership - owned by their founders, financial backers and employees - to public ownership, where the company is listed, any investor can buy shares in the company on the share market that shares are listed on.

Gains, sometimes called capital gains, refer to the profits or returns earned from an investment, such as from owning shares, bonds or real estate. When an investment increases in value, it generates gains for the investor. These can come from dividends, compounding growth, or selling an asset at a higher price than its original cost. Gains are a key goal for investors seeking to grow their wealth over time.