It isn't unusual for smaller cap companies to engage with...

It isn't unusual for smaller cap companies to engage with external third parties to do a call out like this to retail shareholders. I'd see it as good PR as the cap raise for smaller companies gets hardly any airtime in the media and could be easy to miss by a passive retail shareholder - and the last thing you want is a cohort of grumpy retail shareholders who think they have been dudded in the offer because "they weren't told about it".

The fact that the SPP is not underwritten says to me that they are not too fussed at all if they raise the full $20m or not, so the nature of the phone call is not some act of desperation. If they really needed the $20m from the retail shareholders then they would have simply underwritten the SPP and not bothered with the hassle of the phone calls.