A look under the hood of Vimpelcom’s targeting program
As one of the world’s largest integrated telecommunications companies operating in 14 countries, VimpelCom stands at the forefront of facilitating digital connectivity. We empower our customers to engage with one another faster and more effectively than ever before with the latest in digital technologies. Our ability to facilitate connections is not, however, limited to our service offering – we pursue a similar approach to all areas of our business, including our investor relations program.
Gerbrand Nijman, group director and head of investor relations, VimpelCom
Our ability to successfully engage with the investment community is driven by a program focused on proactive communications that leverage a purposeful blend of one-on-one interactions, event settings such as our annual analyst and investor day and site visits to the various countries within which we operate, and quarterly results investor and media events. Central to our IR program is continuously targeting and engaging fundamental investors, as well as using research and measurement to both shape our engagement strategies and evaluate our progress in achieving our goals.
Our investor relations program starts with a comprehensive approach to identifying the right investors with which our equity story resonates. This is not to say that we do not spend a lot of time and energy on our equity story itself but we take a balanced approach, understanding that the message is effective only when it reaches those investors that will take action based on our efforts. The investor landscape within which we operate is vast given our presence across the globe, our headquarters in Amsterdam and our listing on NASDAQ in New York – from emerging markets funds and sovereign wealth funds to generalist equity and sector-focused investors, event-driven hedge funds and credit investors.
With this in mind, we engage in proactive investor targeting to identify the institutions, funds and portfolio managers appropriate for our story using a unique and continuous targeting and engagement methodology that includes proactive prioritization of our time and resources and active management of our ongoing partnerships with brokers and other third parties. Our process also includes continuous review of our efforts to hone our approach in order to advance our engagement of portfolio managers and analysts to drive new investment in VimpelCom, including closely tracking each of our 700-900 meetings annually. By understanding each investor’s viewpoint and tracking its actions, we are better able to serve it as our customer and connect it to VimpelCom’s value proposition.
Pivotal to understanding the needs of our current and prospective investors and ensuring our efforts are having the intended impact is our use of research and measurement. We use regular surveys and in-depth interviews to understand how our equity story is resonating with various types of investors, the effectiveness of our team in engaging with investors, whether our level of disclosure is sufficient, and whether our engagement methods are supporting greater understanding of and investment in VimpelCom. The results allow us to shape our engagement strategies, evaluate progress in achieving our goals, and demonstrate the return on investment we are making in IR.
Our research also provides a quantitative mechanism to measure the impact of our various engagement initiatives, including the significant investments we have made in our award-winning digital engagement: our top-ranked corporate website in the Netherlands, our iPad app and our newsletters. Most importantly, it also ensures we can track investor perception over time. Having a pulse on what our investors are thinking and how their perceptions are changing is critical because it helps us course-correct and remain ready to address the evolving questions and concerns of our current and prospective investors.
Gerbrand Nijman is group director and head of investor relations at VimpelCom
