Research: Site visits most valuable, says investment community

Site visits have topped roadshows and even informal meetings in a new report from IR Magazine asking members of the investment community to name their preferred meeting types.

Click here for more information on how to download the Investor Engagement report: 28 pages on which meetings the investment community finds most rewarding, how the buy side wants to receive invitations, and more. 

Eighty percent of the 446 portfolio managers and buy-side and sell-side analysts surveyed say company or site visits are the most valuable form of engagement – coming out ahead of meetings in informal settings (such as telephone calls and lunches) and roadshows: 73 percent of respondents view each of these meeting types as valuable, while a fifth of respondents give them a neutral rating. 

Investor days follow with a 68 percent rating as valuable, with broker-sponsored conferences coming last: just half of investment community respondents say they find these events valuable. Broker-sponsored conferences are also the only event type to receive a ‘not valuable’ rating of more than 10 percent, with almost a fifth (18 percent) saying they do not find value in them.

The IR Magazine study further uncovers a mismatch in what investors want and what companies are offering – or where their plans lie for the future.

For example, although investors find site visits most useful, only 72 percent of companies offer this type of engagement – compared with investor conferences at 94 percent and roadshows at 91 percent. Fifty-six percent of corporates offer investor days. 

IR Magazine also asked companies about their meeting plans for the coming year and again, site visits are not as high on the corporate agenda, with more companies looking to increase the frequency of roadshows (28 percent) or investor days (26 percent) in 2018 than are looking to increase the number of site visits (24 percent).

This mismatch is unsurprising given that when IR Magazine asked IROs which events they find most valuable, site visits come in last, at just 12 percent.

Get your copy of the Investor Engagement report here