African Investor Relations

We are hosting a Zambeef live conference call this afternoon at 4-30pm. Carl will be talking through the company’s latest presentation here.  You are able to listen to the call live through the website here (see the relevant link) at 4-30pm this afternoon. This listening facility is open to anyone.

Participation in the call is subject to invitation.

An audio transmission of the event will be placed online after the call, you can dial into a number to re-listen to the call and a written transcript of the call will be placed online for download. This is a highly transparent and immediate way of communicating and much appreciated by the professional investment community.

Continue Reading

We host another conference call tomorrow at 4-30pm Zambian time for Copperbelt Energy Corporation. CEC is our most widely covered share measured by website traffic and diversity of interest and its been interesting seeing the growth in interest over the past year. CEC has a compelling business case being located in Zambia just below the DRC so its not surprising.

We typically send out an invitation to participate in the conference call to analysts and investors and then send another invitation to more retail-type investors to listed to the live webcast – the audio of the conference call being streamed through the CEC website.

Investors may listen to the live webcast and submit any questions through InvestorPassTM and management responds soon thereafter should anyone be unable to participate in the conference call.

The purpose of CEC’s Conference Call is, through their Executive Chairman, Hanson Sindowe, and the MD – Corporate Development, Michael Tarney, to present CEC’s 2009 full year performance and facilitate investor-company dialogue. They will present statements on CEC and thereafter entertain questions through the Conference Call operators.

A recording of the conference call will be made available a few hours after the conference call ending through their investor relations website www.cecinvestor.com. Furthermore, for 14 days after the conference call investors may dial the numbers above and re-listen to the conference call dialogue in full. Investors may also register to receive an electronic copy Conference Call transcript as soon as it becomes available.

Investors are urged to register in InvestorPass™ to receive email alerts of ongoing news and corporate announcements on CEC’s online investor relations communications platform – this is handy as we send out reminders on the day of the call. Consistent with best practice during earnings presentations all information is freely accessible undconditionally.

CEC’s 2009 annual report will be made available on their website later on in the week, while the presentation will be made available a few hours before the commencement of the conference call basically at the close of trading on the LuSE tomorrow.

Continue Reading

Nicky, a highly opinionated long-time friend has matured past 40. Far from being her judgemental self as we knew her 10 – 15 years ago, she has mellowed. She knows there’s not much she can do to change the World. Her philosophy now: “It’s not right or wrong it’s just different” she says. This philosophy comes to mind in describing our objectives for the AIC 2010 Online Investor Conference. So what is an online investor conference? Basically it’s the following:-

• A group telephone call where callers listen to a presentation delivered by the CEO. The presentation appears online during this process typically in Powerpoint or similar software. Whilst this is happening anyone on the company’s corporate website can listen to the same conversation.
• Then after the presentation, the floor is opened up to questions from the callers which are answered live by the CEO. Receipt of questions by email is also possible during this time.
• Then the call ends and the audio file of the presentation and the transcript of everything that was said appears online for consumption by the general investment community. Email communications may still be ongoing after the live call.
• Repeat as above for all companies participating to provide a concentrated period within which investors get to hear and understand the investment messages of numerous companies.

Let’s have a closer look at the differences between an online conference and the traditional one-on-one conference:-

Both the physical and online conferences enable concentrated communications to a targeted audience. Both offer time and money saving opportunities. It’s only the large market capitalisation companies that can afford global road shows.

Will our 2010 Online Investor Conference be well supported listed companies? Probably not. Why? CEOs and management teams are unaware of the value of technology and generally ignorant of the hardcore benefits of communicating online with their investment communities. Will it be well supported by investors? Yes, absolutely. It’s something refreshing, new and meaningful.

Will our conference be a success? Yes, absolutely. We have seen the value of online communications in everything we have done over the past 5 years. The demand for robust African information straight from the horse’s mouth is high. Those companies that do dip into this new concept are expected to see value well beyond simple one way communication. In fact, we expect our online conference to be a defining time for companies in setting an IR strategy for the remainder of their year. A kind of “let’s get our message sorted for the year as well as all ensure investment data and interactivity availability”. Then they can concentrate on running their business knowing that the conference event has enabled direct introduction to new and existing investors. The decision however rests with the CEO and his team. And that rests on their knowledge of the benefits of online IR within good corporate governance practice. And that message rests with us.

Who should participate in the online conference? Any company with a robust investment message.

Continue Reading

In December we completed our first conference call for a client in Zambia Zambeef plc.com. Here are a few insights:-

• Having an identified online investment community to which to advertise the event had a significant positive impact in ensuring wide institutional investor participation.
• Our online conference call software identified who was on the line, who wanted to ask a question, who had disconnected. When time ran out management was able to identify those investors whose questions had not been asked and contacted them later.
• Over 25 emerging market institutions participated and over two thirds of them remained online for the duration of the one-hour call. Retail shareholders could listen to the conference call live through our online investor relations software.
• The quality of the telephone connection was exceptional irrespective of the country investor location.
• The event was held at 5pm Central African Time to cater for the USA and European and African markets.
• The level of appreciation of investors participating was very high.
• The event was broadcast live through an AIC investor relations website for all retail and other investors to hear and within 12 hours a written transcript of the event was available for download.
• The audio of the event is available on the client website

Lots can go wrong but did not! Small, somewhat apparently arbitrary things can ruin a professional presentation and conference call – experience in these events is vital and a well-prepped CEO is must.

In future, I suspect that there is scope for many companies in Africa to scale back direct investor interaction in favour of more transparent events such as a conference call. Yes this is to manage disclosure risk, but I see it as an opportunity for listed companies to excel in investor communications. Higher transparency, equality and all those good things….

Our experience and that of other IR professionals has been written up into a guideline for our clients and future clients. All-in-all the experience was an eye opener for all and I expect conference calls will grow into a key tool for listed companies to bridge the communications gap effectively.

John Legat, CEO of Imara Asset Management, a pan African fund manager said of the event:-

“I thought it was excellent and well organized. I hope that other African companies can follow in Zambeef’s footsteps. Amazingly my Zim line was not cut off half way through which was a result.”

Continue Reading