Box IR annual IR survey 2011

Box IR’s annual IR survey

November-December 2011

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Box IR’s aNNual IR suRvey NovemBeR-DeCemBeR 2011 2

Executive summary

About Box IR

During November and December 2011 Box IR conducted its second annual IR survey among listed swedish companies. It is our ambition to make this into an annually recurring examination of the strategic communication and investor relations issues relevant to public companies in sweden. There is no doubt that the questions in the survey are of great interest to the IRo’s. In total we received 120 answers, double the amount compared to the survey conducted last year.

To a large extent the 2011 survey covered other issues than the survey of 2010. among other things the respondents answered questions on work experience, if they measure the effect of their IR efforts and if they give any quantifiable guidance or estimates to investors. We also asked if and to what extent the companies use external IR consultants (excluding the annual report process) and which selection criteria ranks as most important. Finally, we also wanted to know what the IR community view as the greatest challenges for 2012.

Below you will find some highlights from the survey, but we have of course delved deeper into the answers on a less aggregated level and found some interesting takeouts for the respective group of companies. For those interested in a more comprehensive view of the survey we offer one-on-one meetings where we can present the conclusions with a focus on your perspective.

Box IR is a communications agency spe-cializing in investor relations and strategic corporate communications. our offer is based on advice from senior consultants with long experience in equity trading and research. Combined with our experience in communica-tions, public relations and media relations, we can offer an integrated range of services built on industry knowledge and first-hand capital markets experience from some of the leading Nordic Investment Banks.

Box IR is owned and operated by mikael Zillén and Tomas Öqvist. With over 30 years joint experience in the financial sector and over 10 years of financial communications, our vision is to become the leading communications agency for companies and organizations who demand excellence in financial communications, combined with financial expertise. In January 2012 Ingrid Östhols joined Box IR’s team of senior advisors.

Strategisk kommunikation och Finans i samma låda


Highlights

The 120 participants in our survey correspond to a 22 percent response rate. Companies on the NasDaQ omx main market showed a response rate of 36 percent, and 31 of the large Cap Companies participated corresponding to a response rate of 54 percent.

over four out of ten respondents were IR directors, 25 percent were Ceo’s and 15 percent CFo’s. Work experiences prior to the current position vary but are dominated by communications/IR.

19

37

OMX LARGE CAP

2010

OMX MID CAP OMX SMALL CAP Other (FN, AT, NGM)

12

28

16

32

13

29

2011

IRO 44%

CEO 25%

CFO 15%

IR Department 6%

Communications officer 3%

Other 7%

Respondents after position

Respondents after listing



In the 2010 survey we asked about the goals for the IR effort, which we now followed up by surveying how many companies that actually measure the outcome of that effort and if so, how.

To give quantifiable guidance or estimates to the market or not is a controversial issue, but also subject to different interpretations. Hardly surprising for those consuming financial information from the listed companies, our survey confirmed that the number of compa-nies giving tangible earnings estimates is fairly low. more interesting is the confusion that seems to surround the definitions of guidance, estimates and financial targets.

When companies hire IR consultants the most important criterion is knowledge about the target group, i.e. the investors, while price is a less important factor.

Foreign investors are an important and growing group for many companies. However, at the moment few companies have seen much value in having IR staff abroad or hiring consultants to communicate explicitly with these investors.

Investor targeting, i.e. a structured and dedicated way to communicate with selected groups of investors, is becoming an ever more important discipline to increase the ef-ficiency of the IR efforts as well as achieving a desired ownership structure. our survey investigated how the companies handle this.

2

42

26

FAIR MARKET VALUATION

BUILD COMPANY AWARENESS

COMPLIANCE

IMPROVE OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE

FACILITATE FUNDRAISING

OTHER

24

14

11

Main objectives with IRNASDAQ OMX & First North (54 companies, multiple answers possible)

Box IR’s annual IR survey 2010



When ranking different IR activities the result shows a relatively small deviation from the view of the financial market (look at Box IR’s Financial market survey 2011). However, there are significant differences between companies of different size.

after a very turbulent year for the financial markets with focus on the debt crisis and further cutbacks on both the buy and sell side resulting in fewer sector and company specialists, many companies see a greater challenge to reach out to the target group and penetrating the information barriers. We have investigated what the IRo’s view as the big-gest challenges for the coming year.

The condensed summary above represents only a few of the conclusions from the survey. If you want a more comprehensive view of the survey we offer a personalized presenta-tion where we look at the conclusions from your point of view.

Contact us at:[email protected]+46 8-21 41 00

4.36

4.18

3.77

3.57

3.28

2.47

2.30

2.13

One-on-ones

Report presentations

Capital markets days

Roadshows

Webcasts

HTML-based annual report

News letters

Social media

IR activities in order of importance(scale 1-5 where 1=not important and 5=very important)


Investor Relations

Box IR annual IR survey 2011