Think of chat rooms and you might think of dial-up internet or trolls – but not investors and analysts. In Thailand, however, one platform is so popular that companies use it to communicate with the buy side.
That platform is LINE and one firm that’s made a success of it for IR is PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP). When the Bangkok-headquartered oil and gas firm started using LINE back in 2014, the IR team says most of PTTEP’s analysts and investors – as well as the company’s staff and senior management – were already using it both personally and professionally.
Analysts and investors recognize that PTTEP’s chat room is now the fastest way to access IR information, explains the six-strong IR team – something that is vital to making a tool like this a success. As well as the participation of senior management, response time is a key success factor, the team notes, given that social media communications, unlike email and telephone calls, can extend beyond official office hours. ‘Most participants join the chat room as it is the fastest way to interact and get responses from us,’ PTTEP says.
Senior managers, including CFO Pannalin Mahawongtikul, are also members, ‘resulting in mutual benefits for the firm and analysts as managers can receive queries firsthand and promptly manage hot issues, while the investment community can get a response directly from senior figures,’ PTTEP adds.
And the PTTEP Gang, as the chat room is known, has far exceeded the company’s initial expectations. It was originally intended simply as a means of two-way communication and to maintain a close relationship with key stakeholders.
Invitations to join were offered face to face in meetings, at company events or on conference calls and the company hoped to attract around 40 members. But it proved so popular that numbers are now nearing the 90 mark.
The speed of response means LINE has also become an avenue for questions around topics of immediate concern to investors, the IR team adds: ‘The chat group gets quite active when the company is in the news, for example, or if there are industry updates that might affect operations.’
But its main function is IR activity, including informing about ‘public announcements made on the Stock Exchange of Thailand’s website, clarifying questions analysts have regarding such announcements, sharing public news that might have some positive or negative impact on the company, providing clarification and/or mitigation plans for certain events, sending invitations to join events and sharing presentation files and photos from events.’
Of course, the information provided in the chat room has to be public. ‘We indicate the source of publicly available information and provide details or clarification (if necessary) to help investors understand the issue,’ explains the IR team. ‘If there are critical questions or issues lurking in the market, we will disclose a response via official publicity channels before discussing them in the chat room.’
And the two-way nature of the chat room – which is free to use – provides something more important than just another communication channel: feedback. ‘We have begun to receive feedback from the investment community,’ says PTTEP. LINE allows the company ‘to get a sense of which topics are of immediate public interest and how we could improve our disclosure.’
This article appeared in the winter 2017 issue of IR Magazine
