In fact, there's increased uncertainty given reports that some institutional investors intend bidding less than the proposed minimum price of $2.50 a share.
Those reports briefly breathed some life into the QR offer that had been slipping away as the more it was examined, the more expensive it seems to those not being paid to promote it.
As previously written, despite all the advertising, the QR listing is not attractive for the average retail punter. It's certainly not cheap and there's plenty of risk to be overcome in getting performance up to the level that will pay decent dividends. As part of a broad portfolio, as punt, well, maybe.
Last minute mission
Yet that Queensland political need remains for this listing not to be a complete dog. It will be a good performance to pull that off.
The QR heavies are on a last minute sales mission overseas, trying to drum up international support for the privatisation as a "safe" way to invest in the China story. With local institutions cool on the pricing, that foreign sales campaign will need to be convincing.
US and Asian investors are more comfortable than Australians with the idea of a company paying little or no dividend.
For a start, they don't have franked dividends - a big incentive for Australian firms to pay them - and there's a tendency to look for companies that reinvest profits in further growth so that investors are rewarded by way of the shares appreciating for a capital gain.
Old fashioned capitalism
Apple, for example, the world's second biggest company by market capitalisation and fabulously profitable, doesn't pay dividends.
Bill Gates' Microsoft is a late comer to the dividend party. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is a miserable dividend payer - Rupert and sons don't need much in the way of dividends anyway as they pay themselves right royally as directors.
And foreign investors are often more comfortable with higher price/earnings ratios than Australians. QR fits that category.
Yet, reviewing the most successful investing style over the past few decades, it's been very old fashioned capitalism that has done best: a "boring" strategy of buying solid companies that pay good dividends has outperformed the fancier "growth" and "value" schools - although "value" investors often overlap with the dividend buyers.
Sitting on the sidelines
Which brings me back to what it's like sitting on the sidelines with Friday's QR deadline approaching. If the possibility of a lower listing price had been encouraged, I might well have been tempted to have a bet - but that has reportedly been scotched. The $2.50 floor price for institutions apparently remains, meaning a $2.40 minimum for retail investors.
At that price, I think I'll sit it out. QR might well prove to be all right at $2.40 - but it might not. The risk/reward balance doesn't quite do it for me as a retail investor.
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