A company that has shareholders but has no minimal assets on its balance sheet and doesn’t achieve a minimal amount of earnings. Typically it is a non-operating public company, i.e., a company that is registered, and filing periodic reports under a given exchange commission. In the United States, public shells are listed on the Nasdaq small cap market, the Nasdaq bulletin board or the pink sheets.

Public shells usually come in three different forms: (1) a start-up company that never produced minimal revenues. An example is dotcoms with lackluster business ideas and models that have failed to make minimal profits. Normally, these companies have a rather short business track record and have never held or managed substantial assets,(2) a former operating company that fell on its knees or liquidated all of its operations. This includes any company whose management and influential shareholders chose at some point to dispose of all assets but keep the company’s registration active on the lookout for a possible lucrative opportunity of reverse shell merger. Generally, these companies have a long business track record and have acquired substantial assets at some point in their operational history, and (3) a company that was particularly established and registered for the purpose of being sold in a reverse shell merger (also referred to as “blank check company”). These companies, which are rare in real life, have normally no business track record and have never held any assets.

Public shell companies are also known as public shell corporations. Public shells are usually classified as trading non-reporting shells, reporting non-trading shells, non-trading non-reporting shells, and trading reporting shells.