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 shareholders, or may be newly registered shares from the company. In the case of newly registered shares, the offering is referred to as "dilutive" (to EPS) due to the increase in the number of outstanding shares. In the case of selling shares of already registered stock (from an institutional block or from insider shares), the offering is considered "non-dilutive".
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