1 Once upon a time, when you bought broccoli you bought the whole vegetable, stems and crowns. Then it became customary for grocery store produce departments to separate the crowns from the stems and to sell the crowns at a premium. 2  Iâm not a fan of this practice, because I like both parts of the broccoli plant.
A company's first issue of common stock to the public is called an Initial Public Offering. Afterwards, a corporation may issue new equity at any time in order to finance its growth. When new common shares are offered to existing shareholders first, this is called a rights offering.
It used to be that the par value of common stock was equal to the amount invested (as with fixed-income securities). However, today most stocks are issued with either a very low par value (such as $0.01 per share) or no par value at all. You might be asking yourself why a company would issue shares with no par value.