I now little about the stock market, so I'm not sure why you're upset but it sounds important! :) Anyone care to elaborate?
The fact that people are now willing to buy them for $46 a share suggests that they basically sold them at too low a price (arguably $20 a share too low).
In doing so they've lost out on a fair bit of money. Establishing a value ahead of the flotation is difficult and often companies will err on the side of caution (that is sell slightly cheap) to make the sell off look like a success, but I think it's being suggested that this gap is too big to just be that and that some of the previous owners may be unhappy that they've lost out.
They have failed to gain that (admittedly huge) chunk of dollars but they have lost nothing: the have the same money they started with and they never had any more than that. You only lose when you start with X and end up with X-Y, for positive Y.
They have probably missed the opportunity to gain more but that is their mistake (if it is a mistake).
They lost out, just as if I took your $20k new car and gave you $10k, you'd have lost out even though you have more cash.
What happens is that they did not guess (and this is an important term, there is no inherent value in a guess) TODAY'S market's expectations correctly. But that has little to do with true monetary loss or gain.
Of course, their expectations today might be crushed. But personal expectations and hopes are not valuable as shares are.
It's not clear cut but the share price hitting $46 suggests that they could have floated successful at a higher price.
My opinion is that if they had not gone public, nobody would have bought their shares for $46 each. But this is a worthless statement :)
Could it not be the case that while they could find buyers for some of the shares at $46, they could only guarantee selling all of the shares at $26?