Prospectus
The disclosure document given to investors when securities are offered, describing the issuer, the securities and the risks.
Updated 2026-07-26
A prospectus is written to a legal standard: it must not omit information that would make what it does say misleading. That makes it dense, repetitive and unusually candid about risk compared with anything else a company publishes.
It is a point-in-time document. It describes the issuer as of the offering and is not updated afterwards except by supplements. Reading a three-year-old prospectus as a description of the company today is a mistake the document itself warns against.
The most-read sections are usually the risk factors, the ownership tables and the use of proceeds, because those are the parts with no counterpart in ordinary periodic reporting.
Related terms
4 entries- 424(b) prospectus
- The final prospectus filed after a registration becomes effective, carrying the terms the offering actually used.
- Beneficial ownership
- The count of securities a person can vote or dispose of, which is not the same as the number registered in their name.
- Form S-1
- The registration statement a company files to offer securities to the public for the first time.
- Lock-up period
- A contractual window after an offering during which insiders and early investors agree not to sell their shares.