The Rise of Digital Alternatives for Broker Conferences and Meetings

February 27, 2020
10:00 am
CDMX.

As the world grapples with 1) Coronavirus and its impact on travel, and longer-term 2) MIFIDII and associated reduction in broker conference budgets, and 3) ESG obligation to reduce carbon footprint, companies are increasingly looking at Video and digital alternatives to broker conferences and face to face meetings. These events also have the added advantage of costing a lot less than physical meetings, and by taking up less time, allowing for senior management to participate. They work particularly well when you already know the investors or analyst, and it’s a follow up meeting. These days, it’s very easy to add powerpoint and graphics to the video meeting.

The technology has developed to such an extent that banks and stock exchanges now offer virtual video conference events, where over the space of a couple of days an investment banks offers investors digital access to a large number of companies, just as in a normal conference. Morgan Stanley just converted its annual Hong Kong conference into a digital virtual event due to Coronavirus fears. (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-19/morgan-stanley-is-still-hosting-hong-kong-summit-just-virtually)

ZOOM (the company), now hosts its quarterly conference call via ZOOM video. https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2019/09/06/zoom-live-video-earnings-call/. As you can see from the links, the feedback from investors and analysts was generally positive. https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Zoom-Earnings-Call.pdf. That said, there are outstanding issues for Investors/analysts to connect via mobile phones and participate in the call. It also requires senior management to take the call in a Video room, (as opposed to on the road) and thus adds to the complexity of the event. Still, we think adding video improves the user experience and for companies trying to stand out from the crowd, makes sense.

From a practical point of view – and this applies to audio calls naturally – it’s critical to have a room that is acoustically friendly. For a few hundred dollars, one can put panels in the room that reduce echo and make the video and audio call far easier to follow. It’s also important to realize that most investors will take the call on their phone so the video has to work on a small screen.

With respect to pre-recorded videos, these work on specific subjects. Usually attention drops off after about 3 minutes, so do not make videos longer than this. You can add such videos to the website to maximize the impact.

The decision to live stream in video an investor day will depend on the level of investor interest, and location of the investor day. In general, we recommend large companies (that do not have to worry about attendance at their investor day) live video stream, but that mid and small caps evaluate the impact of live streaming on attendance. One option is to record the investor day and put it on the web site after the event.

Below are some articles and links to the suppliers that focus on offering Video technology. In general, we think ZOOM works well, is inexpensive and you can pay per event. For a dedicated IR digital marketing product, Magellan Yates (https://magyates.com) is a leader, tied with the London Stock Exchange and generally charges a monthly retainer. (It also produces corporate IR videos). Miranda-IR works with both and can help Mexican companies navigate the best solutions.

Video technology suppliers:

Cisco

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collaboration/video-collaboration/index.html

Polycom

https://www.polycom.com/hd-video-conferencing.html#

Logitech

https://www.logitech.com/en-us/video-collaboration/products

Lifesize

https://www.lifesize.com/en/video-conferencing-equipment

References:

Title: Evolving Virtual Shareholder Meetings

Author: Anne Sheehan, Darla C. Stuckey, Cathy H. Conlon