You sound like a flipper rather than an investor Andy.
It is quite clear that this company has chosen to not syndicate to an underwriting group, because they don't NEED the money. The float is barely 7% of issued and outstanding. The other 93% is reserved for INVESTORS. This is about price discovery for the people with long term commitment. The company is well financed. Most of the original investors are locked up for 2 years. This float is to figure out what their investment is worth.
The goal of management is clearly to provide the public with an opportunity to invest for the long term along side the "instos and funds and HNI's" who have committed to buy and hold this for at least the duration the restriction period.
The point of only floating 7% is PRICE DISCOVERY for the long term investors. It may well (probably will) pop out of the gate and then settle on a fair value. That's how capitalism works.
The markets do not OWE YOU underpriced IPOs to flip. (And if flipping poorly priced IPOs is the only trick you know, you'll never get rich from this stuff. How many billionaire IPO flippers are there? The rich guys buy and hold and don't pay short term capital gains taxes.)
The companies OWE THEIR LONG TERM SHAREHOLDERS a market based evaluation of fair value. This small public float provides that: price discovery.
When IPOs "pop", it means underwriters did a lousy job pricing the issue (that's what I mean by "poorly priced IPO's above) and that the company being floated screwed themselves and their original seed investors out of millions of dollars of capital that should have gone to the company coffers and future development.
When an IPO "pops", the guys who priced it wrong generally lose their jobs.
Since there is no underwriting syndicate of investment banks to attempt price discovery by shopping the issue around the market prior to the issue (that's how large IPO's are done, with underwriting syndication) in the present case, the 7% being issued is simply a trial balloon that management is floating to discover the proper value for the rest of the company in the markets. That way they don't have to pay 5 or 10% of the market cap to underwriters who may or may not "get it right".
Nobody is getting "rich" off the Ecofibre IPO float. Over time, more and more of the shares will be released to the market at the proper, market dictated price.
For the moment, nobody knows what it's worth. On the 30th of March, we'll have a much better idea.
And remember, Andy, brokers only allocate good IPOs to the clients they like. Don't fight with your broker (I was a US licensed broker in the 90's, prior to becoming a CFO in the 2000's).
There's nobody to fight with here. Apply for the IPO, and hope they give you some. Then invest, rather than speculating on very smart people mispricing securities.
