What do emerging-market investors want to see when they visit IR websites?
Rather than invest in flashy visuals or interactive features, companies should first make sure they have the absolute basics right, according to Michael Chojnacki, founder and CEO of corporate access platform Closir.
Last year, Closir, which focuses on linking companies and investors in emerging and frontier markets, surveyed fund managers about their expectations for IR websites, and came up with the following list of ‘must-have’ items:
- Basic information about the company: a short description of the business, shareholder structure, latest news flow, management team with bios
- Easy access (ideally two clicks or less) to annual report, updated IR presentation, latest financials
- A dedicated IR contact with name, telephone and email address
- Good response rate to emails (an acknowledgement or reply within one day)
- An updated IR calendar with key dates and meeting opportunities (conferences, roadshows, calls).
Fund managers also named the following items as good additional content to consider:
- A dedicated ESG section
- Simple mailing list registration
- A one-page factsheet
- Updated FAQs from recent investor interactions.
‘Most of the funds told us it’s actually quite simple,’ Chojnacki says in an interview with IR Magazine.
‘You have all these overcomplicated websites when actually getting the basics right is 90 percent of what is expected or required. Anyone can do the basics – you don’t need a great designer or anything really sophisticated. Any company can have a website that is appealing to the investment base.’
Chojnacki says one thing that surprised him from the conversations with fund managers is that outside of the key requirements, there aren’t a lot of other features investors are looking for.
‘You can summarize the entire requirements of a website in something like 12 or 15 elements,’ he says.
As a final point, Chojnacki notes that the findings should be applicable to any company, whether it is based in emerging or developed markets.
‘Even though the study was for emerging markets, I’m pretty confident it applies to everybody,’ he says. ‘No one said, Emerging-market companies should do this. They said, Good IR is this.’
