In an equity offering, primary shares, in contrast to

secondary shares In an IPO, secondary shares (in contrast to primary shares) refer to existing shares of common stock that are sold to investors in an offering (see Secondary Market Offering). The selling of these secondary shares may be from existing shareholder ...

, refer to ''newly issued'' shares of

common stock Common stock is a form of corporate equity ownership, a type of security. The terms voting share and ordinary share are also used frequently outside of the United States. They are known as equity shares or ordinary shares in the UK and other C ...

. Proceeds from the sale of primary shares go to the issuer, while those from preexisting secondary shares go to

shareholders A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of corporate stock refers to an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the ...

. Most initial public offerings (IPOs) have a mix of both primary and secondary shares.

References

Corporate finance Stock market {{Stockexchange-stub