Dear Readers,
Our commitment to deliver value to shareholders rests on a clear recognition that, as a public company, we are stewards of other people’s money. We work for those whose capital we are investing. We believe they invest in us expecting superior long-term return, with acceptable risk. We must never – and will never – lose sight of that fact.
While we are obsessive about abiding by the laws and regulations of every jurisdiction in which we operate, compliance alone is not enough. Laws and rules change over time and, by themselves, are inadequate guideposts to run a growing, global company.
The real issue is not whether the rules are adequate or inadequate – although, clearly, there are gaps in GAAP and too often there is distance between the letter and spirit of the law. The real issue is whether managers and directors are honest or dishonest. Our commitment – to ourselves, to our investors and to all our stakeholders – is to manage our company with honesty and integrity. Everything we do rests on this foundation.
Information is the lifeblood of our company and of the financial markets upon which we rely. Investor confidence is built over time on a track record of consistent, accurate, complete and timely disclosure of information. We therefore design our accounting and reporting systems to ensure transparency, and to reflect accurately the underlying financial and operating facts of our business.
Our financial culture and management style are aggressively open and transparent. I am proud of the quality and quantity of our financial communication. We voluntarily subscribe to Regulation FD, and we use the internet to make available a broad range of detailed information in timely and consumer-friendly formats.
Investor relations, however, is too dynamic a process for written and electronic means of communications alone. People who make investment decisions have to see us, the company’s principals. They need to make judgments about our credibility, hear our vision of the industry, ask questions and consider and explore the answers. We have therefore intensified our meetings with investors and other financial stakeholders. In fact, our regular meetings with the investment community – in good and bad times – attest to our underlying commitment.
It is important to remember that our relationship with investors is a two-way street. Investors and analysts rely on us to understand our company’s long-term strategy – our industry outlook, planning and financial picture – so they can better evaluate our marketplace position and prospects. We in turn encourage investors and analysts to share their opinions with us. While we are experts in our industry, they are experts in theirs. By engaging in a meaningful dialogue with investors and analysts, we can learn from the capital markets and improve our understanding of their key concerns and value drivers. Therefore, at the outset of each investor meeting in which I participate, I ask people to tell me and my colleagues what they think about what we are doing, and how we can better communicate with them.
It is only through a consistent, honest and transparent dialogue with the investment community that we can move beyond the baseline of compliance to communicate our company’s story effectively in a crowded and competitive market to all of our constituents.
Sincerely,
Lorenzo Zambrano
Chairman and CEO of Cemex
