Sixth in 2014 and second last year, in 2016 ARC Resources ranks third overall, with three awards and three further short-listings. David Carey, the firm’s long-standing IRO, is helped by a team of three: Kayzra Mulji, Megan Hjulfors and Martha Wilmot.
Carey says meeting requests over the past year ‘are down a bit, but we still did more than 300 one-on-one meetings, with road trips in Europe, Asia and North America.’ The team also made contact with more than 200 investors at group lunches and attended 16 conferences. ‘One thing that is a little different is that we have made an effort to get more of our officer team exposed to the market,’ reports Carey. ‘In addition to our CEO, CFO and COO, we’ve also had our vice presidents of engineering, operations, finance and geosciences attend investor conferences and meetings.’
On the macro environment, Carey describes 2015 as ‘very challenging’, with commodity prices falling to levels not seen since the turn of the century. ‘Canadian oil and gas companies have been challenged to show US, European and Asian investors that we are still relevant,’ he continues. ‘To do this we’ve compared our projects with the top US oil and gas plays. And the number of analysts covering ARC has increased to 18, with three smaller, boutique energy firms picking up coverage.’
The CEO videos known as Myron’s Minutes continue, as do quarterly discussions with the COO and CFO moderated by Carey. ‘Feedback from institutional investors, retail brokers and analysts continues to show that these are well received,’ he reports. ‘And we continue to look for ways to improve our website and disclosure. One example would be the addition of a sustainability performance table to complement our biennial sustainability report, so that investors can track our ESG numbers on a timely basis.’
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.
