Who did we survey?
The past year has seen seismic changes to the investor events landscape. The Covid-19 pandemic has all but obliterated in-person events, causing them to be switched to a virtual format, the nature of which continues to evolve as investors and IROs become more familiar with the experience. There is little expectation that investor events will return to the same in-person levels once the effects of the pandemic subside; it appears more likely that virtual investor events will remain part of the IR calendar.
This report looks at investor events from the second half of 2019 to the present day. It covers both investor events held before the pandemic hit and subsequent conduct during the pandemic. We examine the participation of IROs and investors at both in-person and virtual events and how they rate these experiences.
The events covered in this report are investor conferences, investor days, site visits and roadshows and for each of these we compare and contrast the in-person and virtual formats. The report examines where resources should be allocated for investor events in the near future and what the long-term prospects are for in-person and virtual events.
The findings in this report come from three surveys conducted between Q3 2020 and Q1 2021. Data on IRO participation in events is taken from IR Magazine’s Global IR Survey in Q3 2020, while reporting on IR resources allocation for future events comes from the Global IR Survey in Q1 2021. All findings from the investment community side, including event participation, were investigated in IR Magazine’s Global Investor Survey, which was conducted in Q4 2020. The term 'investors' is used in this report as shorthand for members of the investment community, including fund managers as well as buy-side analysts and sell-side analysts. Data in this report is broken down by region, by job title for investor responses and by company size for corporate responses.
Market cap sizes are defined as follows:
Lloyd Bevan
Kathleen Hennessy
James Noden
