While we were all enthusiastically traveling back (on June 9) from the 2017 NIRI Annual Conference in Orlando, the House of Representatives passed the Financial CHOICE Act of 2017 (FCA2017), a bill predominantly intended to undo various aspects of Dodd-Frank. As all things Washington DC these days, it’s anyone’s guess what path the Senate will […]

With Question 4 of the 2017 Shareholder Communications 365 Study, we learned that only 20% of institutional investors visit your investor relations website to read your news releases. Additionally, the Rivel Research study also confirmed that 75% of institutional investors want your earnings release (in full) in the work terminal. So why are they visiting your IR website? […]

This is a shareholder communications and targeting discussion – assuring that the right influencers (analysts and portfolio managers) get the full narrative (earnings results) in the manner that suits them (their Wall Street portal). You may want to speak with your external stakeholders yourself to understand their internal processes and research workflow.

It’s been four years since the SEC’s social media guidance was added to RegFD and a good a time as any to refresh the details of RegFD. Issuers have considerable flexibility in determining how to satisfy the public disclosure requirements of RegFD. The public disclosure requirement can be satisfied by filing the information in a Form 8-K or […]

With last week’s Question 3 of the 2017 Shareholder Communications 365 Study, we learned that 95% of institutional investors visit your investor relations website as part of their initial due diligence prior taking (or not taking) a position. This clearly indicates, as stated in the IR magazine article – Investors visit IR websites for content, not data, […]

Last week via Question 2 of the 2017 Shareholder Communications 365 Study, we learned that the majority of institutional investors that hold your stock only visit your investor relations website once a month or once a quarter. This implies that the IR website is not a highly trafficked data tool for your current analysts, but certainly they do check […]

Last week via Question 1 of the 2017 Shareholder Communications 365 Study, we learned that 65% of institutional investors consider an investor relations website as “must-see-TV.” They will not take a position without a company having one. But how frequently do institutional investors actually visit? This is a fairly common cost-to-value discussion we have with […]

Since the day I marketed my first IR website in 2000, I’ve been a staunch evangelist for the product. It’s a hellava smart and simple marketing tool that combines superb, reliable content with a professional presentation of your financial brand. It’s your transparency library. But I am a tad bias. (Material disclosure: I am paid […]

After the organized chaos of 2017’s first “Earnings Season,” we are all immediately thrust into what was once called “Annual Report” season.  However, with the ever-emerging importance of the proxy document and the demise of the “marketing-based” printed annual report, we should rebrand the next few months as “10-K Season.” All public companies other than foreign private […]

Corporate communications professionals can learn from past earnings release pitfalls we’ve seen companies fall into, and help ensure a smooth earnings day next quarter.

Academic whitepapers regarding investor relations tend to disappoint me. The lionshare I have read (or snoozed through) are invariably based on share price and volume juxtaposed against some activity calculated with a painful equation built on old data i.e. “earning share price from 2002 to 2008 and the impact of XYZ.” More frustrating to me […]

The discussion of company guidance vs. meeting consensus estimates is hardly new. Certainly, in the mid-2000’s (thanks, Enron!) the practice or management publishing forward guidance took a evident shift from quarterly to annual, with updates as materially needed. The benefits to issuing formal financial guidance is that it can be an effective tool for helping […]

Earlier this month, the Canadian Securities Administrators (comprised of Alberta, Ontario and Québec securities commissions) released Staff Notice 51-348 Staff’s Review of Social Media Used by Reporting Issuers. This notice publishes the results of the CSA’s analysis of “social media disclosure” by 111 reporting issuers on websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Instagram, as well as […]

One of the most obvious differentiators between Investor Relations and its CorpComm brethren is that IR has highly defined “seasons” and annual occasions. By no means am I implying that PR and marketing don’t have annual events that drive their calendar – i.e. the medical imaging sector revolves around the RSNA Conference and Exhibit – […]