Benchmarking your IR: Get up to speed on current best practice
The 2019 IR Magazine Global Investor Relations Practice Report is an annual study of the resources dedicated to and practices of investor relations teams around the world. It covers everything from IR budgets and team sizes to reporting structures and attendance at investor events. The 2019 edition is based on the responses of 905 investor relations practitioners to a global survey overseen by IR Magazine.
The findings in this report are taken from the annual global IR practice surveys carried out by IR Magazine and conducted electronically over the past year. Data for team size, reporting structure and analyst coverage is gathered from survey responses from Q1 2019 to Q3 2019.
All other data points are calculated from responses to our latest survey round, which was conducted during Q3 2019. Thanks to the high response rate from the global IR community, we have been able to sub-segment the data in this report, splitting it by region and subsequently by market capitalization. This allows for the creation of meaningful peer groups, which provide a more sophisticated level of benchmarking. We have also been able to break down the data by market sector.
Most of the data contained within this report consists of mean average figures of specific classifications. The majority of these figures are adjusted to lessen the influence of mistyped responses or disproportionate values. The level of adjustment necessary involves excluding the highest and lowest five percentiles from the mean calculations. Whenever a mean average is the result
of data from a pre set scale, figures have not been adjusted and all values are used in the calculations.
All monetary figures given in this report are in US dollars, with company market capitalizations classified as follows:
SMALL CAP: UNDER $1 BN
MID-CAP: $1 BN - UNDER $5 BN
LARGE CAP: $5 BN TO UNDER $30 BN
MEGA-CAP: $30 BN AND OVER
Global overview
Budgets
IR budgets have significantly tightened in the last two years. The global average IR budget has fallen below $400,000 for the first time since IR Magazine started researching budget figures in 2011 and now sits at $393,000.
Budgets vary considerably by company size. There is a difference of more than $500,000 between the average small cap and mega-cap IR budgets, from $232,000 at small caps to $734,000 among megacap companies. There is a rise of around $100,000 with each cap size until large to mega-cap, where there is a jump in budget size of almost $300,000.
Just under a third of the IR budget is typically spent on external services. Although the proportion of IR budget spent externally decreases as cap size increases, the amount spent in real terms increases because the overall budgets are higher.
Senior management IR days
North American senior managers spent an average of 46 days in total on IR in the past year, one more than the global average and one day down on the North American average in 2017. CFOs dedicated the most time to IR, spending an average of 19 days overall.
Small-cap senior managers spent more time on investor relations than management members at any other cap size. This is due to the amount of extra time CEOs at North American small caps spent on IR: 13 more days and 17 more days, respectively, than CEOs at midcap and large-cap companies. North American mega-cap CFOs spent an average of 23 days on IR in the past year, more time than CFOs at any other cap size.
Investor meetings
Asian companies held an average of 170 one-on-one meetings with investors in the past year, lower than the global average but higher than the typical number for North American companies and 24 more meetings than Asian companies held in 2017. Just over a quarter of Asian investor meetings have senior management in attendance, the lowest percentage for any region and resulting in the lowest number in real terms of meetings involving senior management.
The number of investor meetings increases with company size. Asian small-cap companies held an average of 98 meetings, just one above the global average. While mid-cap and large-cap Asian companies held fewer meetings than the global norm for companies of such size, Asian mega-caps held 80 more meetings than the average global mega-cap.
Sector overview: Communications
Global Investor Relations Practice Report 2019: Global overview, regional analysis, sector focus
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