One of the many things that can keep investor relations and corporate communications experts awake at night is wondering how their companies are perceived. Do investors and fund managers believe your company is well run? Is your industry stable? Is your stock fairly priced? Are your top executives respected?
Trading activity gives some answers, but it’s only the beginning. Are suppliers and customers confident of their relationship with the company? Do local lawmakers, journalists and union leaders view it positively or with some suspicion? Is the business a likely candidate for takeover? Would it make an attractive merger partner? How do market participants view your peers?
The answers are crucial for IROs wondering whether their message is really getting out there. After all, there’s more to any company, regardless of size, than its quarterly earnings. Beyond the IR department, banks, brokerage firms and investment managers are undergoing a transformation. Driven by regulatory demands, their need for data for risk evaluation, due diligence and compliance is growing.
Beyond the search engine
For an outside view of your company and your peer companies, you could just use Google, of course. But that picture would be superficial, a grainy snapshot taken from far away. Experts say the service, while free and omnipresent, is not omniscient. Google and other search engines trawl only what’s available on public web sites that are already widely trafficked.
And for all the information floating around, there is surprisingly little available on private companies, a blind spot many publicly traded corporations, banks and other businesses can no longer ignore. Some proprietary services are beginning to offer insight into these often powerful companies.
Free online aggregation services offer little history, updating records so frequently that finding basic information – such as a stock price on a particular date – may be nearly impossible. There is also a problem with accuracy and credibility, as anyone who has meandered across cyberspace for stock tips or just reliable corporate information has noticed.
Few companies have the resources to check the credibility of an internet posting, which would require immediate scrutiny by experts in the marketplace. In any event, many periodicals don’t publish web sites to trawl, or don’t post complete content to non-subscribers.
Knowledge universe
To be fully invested in the knowledge universe, companies need proprietary information tailored to their specific needs. To be sure, open source information has value – it is, after all, the currency of public discussion, and even rumors have a way of becoming true. But a more focused search of all relevant periodicals and web sites can yield a trove of real-time information that can benefit a variety of officers in any company.
A premium, fee-based service such as FPinfomart, a product of CanWest MediaWorks, can offer relief from the deluge by tailoring the information to the user. These services can save time squandered on searching for information, while providing access to relevant, qualified sources.
With that level of information, IROs can respond immediately to misinformation or news leaks, or tweak the investment story if it’s not being received the right way. CFOs can reevaluate their business landscape as it changes and make better informed decisions. Other members of senior management may need to be apprised immediately if the firm is rumored to be a takeover target or at risk of falling foul of regulatory changes.
In the financial services industry, in particular, it’s about managing risk – legal and regulatory risks, business disruption, challenges to public reputation, and so on. This is where proprietary information-gathering services come into play. Some offer bare-bones products that are slightly more targeted versions of a Google search. Others provide analysis and historical context to create a detailed portrait of your own company or any other.
That is what Beatrice Kerr decided Deloitte & Touche’s Toronto office needed. As Deloitte’s senior manager of business information services, Kerr works with experts who are often asked to evaluate a company’s stock price or long-term value – looking back five or even 20 years. Deloitte also keeps an eye out for companies or divisions worth acquiring by its clients, seeking management strength or other attractive assets that are not spelled out in publicly available quarterly filings.
Kerr, an FPinfomart subscriber, says: ‘Historical data is very hard to get with web-based products. FPinfomart offers standardized financial statements, benchmarking and comparisons, so the whole package is more useful and more authoritative.’
Knowledge workers and networkers know the value of sharing information. FPinfomart allows for collaboration among colleagues while respecting copyright obligations, which can in theory be a problem with free search engines.
Fine-tuned information
Kerr’s information needs are not unique, according to Arturo Duran, president of interactive services at CanWest MediaWorks. FPinfomart offers everything from a user-controlled electronic clipping service of 275 predominantly Canadian publications to highly customized information that can be finely tuned to the needs of different departments within a company.
‘It’s a holistic product from several sources,’ says Duran. The service produces its own proprietary content and partners with third-party media, market data and financial data providers.
FPinfomart is part of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, which publishes the National Post, the Financial Post and other leading newspapers across Canada. FPinfomart subscribers receive product line as well as third-party newspapers, trade journals, magazines and broadcast transcripts.
Unlike many web sites, which post only the top few inches of a selection of stories, FPinfomart captures all articles in each issue. Most content is published online on the day of release. Several companies offer competing news services, including US-based Bloomberg, LexisNexis, Hoovers and Factiva (a Dow Jones/Reuters joint venture), but none focuses on Canadian firms. Thomson has a Canadian news division, but it gets much of its content from FPinfomart, Duran says.
The service provides deep coverage of Canadian companies and issues and includes information from experts in national and regional regulations and markets. That is useful to firms north of the border but can also benefit foreign firms with Canadian subsidiaries.
Any researcher, analyst or IRO will attest that there is now more information available than ever before. But sifting through all the words and charts to find the most accurate and focused content can make the difference in today’s ever-faster marketplace.
For more information contact:
E-mail: [email protected]
Tel: +1 800 661 7678
Web site: www.fpinfomart.ca
