Profile appears in IR Magazine Investor Perception Study – Canada 2016
Scott Parsons was the only member of Alamos Gold’s IR team for more than two years but at the end of 2015 he hired Annelise Martin as an associate. Senior and other management members are very involved in the IR effort and Parsons describes this as a key driver of the program. ‘It includes active participation in our marketing efforts by our CEO, CFO, COO and vice president of construction & development,’ he reports.
Alamos Gold has moved up dramatically in this year’s rankings: from 69th place to 10th. Asked why this might be, Parsons says there were no structural changes to the IR program, ‘though our interactions with analysts and investors were more tailored and focused over the past year. This included simplifying our corporate message and holding more frequent meetings and interactions with our key shareholders and prospective investors to ensure a clear understanding of our results and strategy. We also completed a merger with AuRico Gold this year, and marketed heavily around this event.’
In all, Alamos Gold had 250 IR meetings and conference calls last year, attended nine investor conferences and participated in eight roadshows. These were all in North America, which is atypical. ‘Normally we would also include at least two roadshows to Europe but time constraints around our merger with AuRico limited overseas travel in 2015,’ Parsons says.
And how does he decide whether all this effort pays off? ‘We measure the success of our IR efforts in a number of ways,’ he says. ‘On the qualitative side, this includes reviewing how well analysts and investors understand our short-term results and longer-term strategy and soliciting informal feedback from these groups on our IR efforts.
‘We also continuously benchmark our IR efforts against our peers to identify best practices. On the quantitative side, this includes measuring how well our share price performs relative to our peer group and the gold indices.’
This profile is part of a series that appears in the IR Magazine Investor Perception Study – Canada 2016. The report, available to professional subscribers to IR Magazine, can be accessed here.
