Pandemic led to more IR-only in-person roadshows, shows study

Half of the admittedly few in-person roadshows held between Q3 2020 and Q2 2021 were IR-only, with no C-suite presence, reveals the latest data from IR Magazine.

The unsurprising eradication of in-person roadshows as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic saw just 7 percent of companies traveling in person during the research period, according to the 12th annual Global Roadshow Report. This compares with 81 percent of companies that went on the road from Q3 2019 to Q2 2020 and 93 percent in the previous year.

Among the in-person roadshows that did take place, ‘there has been a greater reluctance to take senior management on the road,’ write the report authors. From Q3 2019 to Q2 2020, 81 percent of in-person roadshows involved senior management; in the most recent research period, half of all in-person roadshows were conducted by the investor relations team alone.

Instead, of course, roadshows were held virtually, with more than 60 percent of companies doing so. And the data for senior management involvement in those is starkly different from in-person events.

‘A member of senior management was in attendance at 83 percent of virtual roadshows,’ write the report authors. ‘This is a considerably higher attendance level than for in-person roadshows and is slightly higher than the level of attendance by senior management at pre-pandemic in-person roadshows.’

Investor one-on-ones

The same trend is seen when looking at senior management attendance at one-on-one investor meetings, which is covered in the IR Magazine Global and Regional Investor Relations Practice Report.

Globally, companies attended just 11 in-person investor one-on-ones (a figure pushed up by notably more in-person meetings in Asia), compared with 140 virtual investor meetings over the past year. But even at such a low level, and with almost no intercontinental travel, senior management still stayed away: just 34 percent of in-person one-on-ones had senior management involvement, compared with 45 percent of virtual meetings.

Regionally, the biggest gap is seen in North America, where an average of just three face-to-face investor meetings took place over the research period. Of these, senior managers attended less than a third (31 percent), compared with 56 percent of virtual one-on-ones.

Although European companies also held very few in-person meetings (six), far more of them involved someone from the C-suite (60 percent). That figure is, in fact, higher than the number who attended virtual meetings (41 percent), indicating that European senior managers attach greater importance to meeting investors in person when possible.

In Asia, where companies held a notable average of 20 in-person one-on-ones, senior management was in attendance almost equally regardless of format (45 percent for in-person meetings, 44 percent for virtual).

Click here for more information and to download your copies of both the IR Magazine Global Roadshow Report and the Global and Regional Investor Relations Practice Report.