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Janet Dignan, founder of IR Magazine, introduces this year's report
Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of this year’s IR Magazine Investor Perception Study – Canada is how relatively little change there has been between this year’s winning companies and last year’s. Once again we have Agnico Eagle Mines, RBC and Fortis occupying the top three slots in the award for best overall IR by a large-cap company. The only change is that this year Agnico Eagle and RBC are joint-first rather than first and second, respectively, as they were last year.
And certainly the comments about Agnico Eagle are oozing with praise, especially for the individuals involved. That doesn’t just mean the IRO, Brian Christie, who is described as ‘one of a kind’ by one sell-sider and, perhaps even more impressively, by another as having a remarkable level of professionalism. Beyond the IR department, the company’s senior management team, specifically CEO Sean Boyd and CFO David Smith, are also recognized for their contribution to IR. Co-winner RBC enjoys fulsome compliments, too, with one sell-sider saying: ‘The head of IR at Royal Bank has done an outstanding job.’
Among the mid-caps – companies with a market cap of C$2 bn-C$10 bn – we see similar year-on-year consistency, with ARC Resources retaining the top slot. After many years of David Carey doing a consistently impressive – and award-winning – job of IR for the oil and gas producer, it’s now all change across the board. After Carey’s departure, Bevin Wirzba took over and retained the award for best IR professional at ARC. Then Kris Bibby took responsibility for IR and again hangs on to this year’s award, though Bibby has now moved beyond IR to become CFO at the company. What remains to be seen is how things progress after this year’s standing down of long-term CEO Myron Stadnyk and CFO Van Dafoe – winners of the best senior management award by a small or mid-cap company for this year.
Indeed, we have to look at the small-cap companies in this year’s research if we want to find any real change. Here, Altus Group has performed especially well, taking best overall IR by a small-cap company and ranking joint-second in the award for best small or mid-cap IRO. Given that the latter award merges two cap sizes and Camilla Bartosiewicz of Altus ranks joint-second, despite being among the smaller group, this is definitely impressive. And judging by the comments of one sell-sider, it would appear to be having an impact: ‘The story of Altus is highly complex and it goes the extra mile to communicate it to investors. It also gives analysts and investors access to its customers so they can better understand the firm’s prospects for growth.’
This sounds like a smart initiative, which some of Altus’ bigger brethren might well be able to learn from. Indeed, we hope many Canadian companies will pick up useful ideas from this report and we congratulate all the companies and individuals cited here by members of their all-important investment community audiences. The business of IR continues to grow more demanding and more sophisticated so those who consistently perform well in this research should give themselves a well-earned pat on the back.
Congratulations to them all.