An offering whereby a company goes public- i.e., issues its stock for the first time in the primary market. An unseasoned offering (also, an initial public offering (IPO)) is a company’s first offering of shares to the public. When a company decides to issue stock to the public, for the first time, in order to raise capital, it carries out in an IPO (a primary offering/ an unseasoned offering), which is a first-time offering of shares to investors.

All securities are issued by means of a primary offering in which the issuer receives the proceeds of the offering and investors become holders of the securities (and owners of a respective share in the issuer’s capital share). Thereafter, whenever the securities are bought or sold, the trading takes place in the secondary market.

Any further offering that take place later on are known as seasoned offerings.

An unseasoned offering is also known as an unseasoned issue.