There is a notably higher appreciation among IROs for in-person than virtual investor events. More than eight in 10 IR professionals give in-person investor days and site visits a high satisfaction rating of 8+/10, with just under a third giving in-person investor days a perfect 10 score. This compares with 68 percent being highly satisfied with virtual investor days and 50 percent with virtual site visits.
Satisfaction with both roadshows and investor conferences is lower in both formats, but the in-person format is still clearly favored over virtual. While approaching two thirds of IROs give a high satisfaction score to both in-person roadshows and investor conferences, a minority of 48 percent express similar satisfaction for virtual roadshows and 36 percent do so for virtual investor conferences.
Among North American IROs, there is a sizable difference in satisfaction levels between in-person and virtual formats for roadshows, site visits and investor conferences. Investor days, both in person and virtual, are most highly rated by North American IROs.
For European IROs, the greatest difference in satisfaction between in-person and virtual formats is with investor days, where the number giving high satisfaction scores for the in-person format is 31 percentage points higher than for virtual.
Asian IROs tend to give high satisfaction ratings for both in-person and virtual formats in all event types. But they still give higher ratings for in person than for virtual, including a 26 percentage-point difference between high satisfaction ratings for in-person and virtual investor conferences.
Satisfaction for in-person roadshows is highest among IR professionals at mega-cap companies, while small-cap IROs give the highest rating for both in-person and virtual site visits.
IROs at all company sizes give higher satisfaction ratings for in-person site visits and investor days than they do for investor conferences and roadshows in person.
IROs at small, mid-cap and mega-cap firms give considerably lower ratings for satisfaction with virtual investor conferences than those held in person. For large-cap IROs there is just an 11 percentage-point difference in high satisfaction ratings between virtual and in-person investor conferences.
As with IROs, investors favor in-person over virtual formats for all types of event. But overall satisfaction for these events is lower among investors than for IROs, particularly with the in-person format.
The greatest levels of satisfaction are found for in-person site visits, with two thirds of investors giving a high satisfaction rating of 8+/10 and 13 percent giving a perfect 10 score. Unlike IROs, investors are more satisfied with in-person roadshows and investor conferences than they are with in-person investor days.
When it comes to virtual events, the clear standout is investor conferences. While more investors give a high satisfaction rating to in-person conferences, the difference is a margin of just 2 percentage points. In addition, more investors give a perfect 10 score to virtual conferences than they do to the in-person format, so it appears there is very little real difference in satisfaction between in-person and virtual investor conferences.
