How is this possible? No date set as yet. For such a simple business model, they produce staggerring revenue. Regardless if they produce anything, they connect people to eachother and don't have any viable competitors at present.
If you have a client determined to invest say several $MM in an IPO, you express that interest to your firm's trading desk. They roll-up all the monies from the interested brokers and contact the potential issuer of the IPO and secure an agreement on share availability.
By the time the actual IPO happens, the shares are already pre-sold at the IPO price. Typically by two-weeks to opening bell, all the IPO shares have homes. (mostly institutional investors. Very little from individual investors)
In the particular case of my wife's office one client has successfully purchased into a couple of different IPOs in the past, and has expressed interest in FaceBook. So shares are already promised for him. (Expressed interest means more than a phonecall. It means cash-on-hand waiting.)
If you buy genuine IPO shares, as an individual investor, the firms usually restrict you from trading them for 30 days from the acquisition date. Should you sell prior to 30days you can expect to have future IPO requests declined.
