Shelf Offering

You like homemade pickled eggs. However, they're a pain to make. So you don't just make one or two when you want to eat them. You make a whole bunch. Then you put the extra on the shelf. They're there when you get a craving.

Same thing with a shelf offering. A company registers shares with regulators, but doesn't sell them all at once. Instead, it puts some of the shares on the shelf (metaphorically speaking). It can now sell them in the future, without having to file all the paperwork again. The firm has a three-year window to sell the stock without having to go through the bureaucratic rigmarole, which can often smell even worse than pickled eggs.