Why the winners won`:` IR Magazine Awards – Canada 2020

Best practice interviews with Canada’s finest IR teams

Awards

Why the winners won –
IR Magazine Awards – Canada 2020

Best practice interviews with Canada’s finest IR teams

On October 19, the Canadian IR community logged in to join the first ever virtual IR Magazine Awards – Canada. Hundreds of people tuned into the event, which built on the success of the virtual IR Magazine Awards in the US and Europe.

There were 27 trophies presented on the night, each with an acceptance speech. In the article below, we highlight many of the winners’ stories and hear how these leading IR teams have navigated the Covid-19 pandemic.

Winners of these awards were selected by two methodologies: the researched awards are based on a survey of hundreds of members of the investment community, and the winners of the nominated awards are selected from a short list by an independent judging panel.

Awards by research

Agnico Eagle Mines

Best overall investor relations (large cap) – joint winner
Best investor relations officer (large cap) – Brian Christie
Best IR by a senior management team (large cap) – Sean Boyd (CEO) and David Smith (CFO)
Best in sector: materials (large cap)

Agnico Eagle Mines won four awards at this year’s event, following on from its five victories last year. Brian Christie, vice president of investor relations, acknowledges that the company has had ‘a very active IR program for 15-20 years’, but this year has still been a challenge. During the early stages of the Covid-19 outbreak, Christie contacted the company’s top 50 investors to update them on how the business would be affected – including the temporary closure of seven out of eight operating mines. In this video, he talks about how Agnico Eagle Mines has embraced virtual investor marketing, giving the management team enhanced access to investors around the world.

Altus Group

Best overall investor relations (small cap)
Best in sector: financials & real estate (small to mid-cap)

The Covid-19 pandemic has ‘really underpinned the importance of investor targeting,’ says Camilla Bartosiewicz, vice president of investor relations. ‘Cultivating a strong shareholder base has allowed Altus Group’s share price to fare well, and having targeted, high-quality institutional long-term, growth-oriented shareholders has helped us withstand some of the volatility we saw earlier this year.’

Much like ARC Resources, Altus Group has experienced a CEO transition this year, which Bartosiewicz says required the IR team to ‘step up its frequency and transparency’ of communication – resorting to providing regular updates on macro trends affecting the firm’s sector.

ARC Resources

Best overall investor
relations (mid-cap)
Best investor relations officer
(small to mid-cap) – Kris Bibby
Best IR by a senior management team (small to mid-cap) – Van Dafoe (CFO) and Myron Stadnyk (CEO)
Best in sector: energy (mid-cap)
Best use of technology & social media for IR (award by nomination)

ARC Resources is another heavyweight of the IR Magazine Awards – Canada, winning five awards this year, two in 2019 and six in 2018. But Kris Bibby, senior vice president and chief financial officer, says ‘change in 2020 was quite drastic – we had a CEO and CFO transition and a very active capital markets program.’

Indeed, Van Dafoe retired in February 2020 and was succeeded by Bibby as the company’s CFO, while Myron Stadnyk retired in April 2020, giving the IR team plenty to work on outside of the response to the pandemic. ‘Throughout all of these changes, we knew one of the key things we needed to keep doing was communicate with shareholders and staff,’ Bibby says.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the company also published its first ESG report in 2020. Bibby says the IR team decided to launch it with a webcast. ‘We had excellent attendance from a broad range of investors and it generated a lot of follow-on calls,’ he adds.

RBC

Best overall investor relations (large cap) – joint winner
Best financial reporting
Best in sector: financials & real estate (large cap)

Asim Imran, vice president of investor relations at RBC, has spent much of this year thinking about how the bank’s IR team can use technology in new and innovative ways. He says the IR team has been working on ‘bringing elements of technology that RBC does well into IR’, such as data analysis, interaction, sharing internally and generating insights.

‘We’re trying to use technology to provide a better service to all of our stakeholders, which is, I think, an acceleration of changes we were already making, rather than something new,’ Imran says.

Canadian Tire Corporation

Best in sector: consumer discretionary & consumer staples

At Canadian Tire, the IR team has seen an opportunity as a result of the dynamics stemming from the Covid-19 outbreak. ‘The pleasant surprise through all of this is that we’ve been able to reach a wide base of investors,’ says Marina Davies, associate vice president of investor relations at Canadian Tire. ‘We’ve been participating in fireside chats with our analysts and they’ve been able to target and get access to more than 100 institutions at a time. That reach was something we didn’t have before.’

Precision Drilling Corporation

Best in sector: energy (small cap)

The Covid-19 pandemic brought ESG to the foreground for every company, especially with regards to employee safety and security. But in this video, Kevin Neveu, president and CEO of Precision Drilling, discusses the company’s enhanced environmental disclosures as well. This year the company published its second sustainability report, for example.

‘We have transitioned from being quiet about what we’re doing on the ESG front to helping investors see what we’re doing,’ Neveu says. ‘A lot of what we’re doing with the business to increase efficiency and costs ties well with the environmental side to reduce emissions, so highlighting that has been important.’ He adds that the sustainability report helps to tie the firm's messaging together and show how sustainability is factored into executive compensation.

Suncor Energy

Best in sector: energy (large cap)

In the oil and gas sector, it’s been a challenging year because the sector ‘has been hit on both sides: supply and demand,’ according to Kate Charlton, director of investor relations at Suncor. She adds that ‘the needs of the investor base have evolved [because] we’ve been on such a long bull run that this has been a rapid and dramatic shift.’ For Charlton, who joined the company in 2019, it’s been ‘a formative time in hunkering down and distilling our key messaging.’

CN

Best in sector: industrials

CN has a track record as an early adopter of new IR technologies. In the virtual environment during Covid-19, the IR team has been successful in working with the sell side on a number of virtual webcasts that proved to be effective, according to Paul Butcher, vice president of investor relations at the firm. The company has 27 covering analysts and no shortage of conference speaking opportunities, but Butcher says these smaller bespoke events have been especially beneficial. ‘We’ve been able to bring more people to the calls and the reaction has been positive,’ he says.

Endeavour Mining

Best in sector: materials (mid-cap)

‘We’ve been fairly lucky because in times of crisis, gold does quite well,’ says Martino De Ciccio, vice president of investor relations at Endeavour Mining. ‘It’s typically a safe haven and that’s what’s happened: gold has reached record levels this year.’ De Ciccio reveals that Endeavour Mining did not have to pull its earnings guidance this year, and remains on track to hit its target, unlike the majority of businesses that have been hampered by Covid-19. But, of course, the IR program has evolved – factoring in virtual events and digital efforts – as De Ciccio discusses in the video.

Awards by nomination

TD Bank Group

Best ESG reporting

This year marks the second consecutive win for TD Bank in the best ESG reporting category at the IR Magazine Awards – Canada. Since the Covid-19 outbreak, Rachel Guthrie, the bank’s head of ESG reporting and environmental impact, says she’s seen an increased focus on social issues such as employee safety, wellbeing and retention. ‘What’s become clear is a need for more robust social data,’ she says. ‘Quantifying the environmental impacts has taken priority for so long, but we’re now seeing investor demand increase for this social data.’

Despite this shift in focus, Guthrie says she continues to work hard to avoid TD Bank’s ESG reporting including ‘the kitchen sink’. She does this by focusing on having robust practices around ESG reporting to make sure the numbers that are put out are consistent and comparable, year on year.

Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp

Best investor event

Algonquin Power and Utilities won the best investor event award in recognition of a sustainability day it hosted for its investors last year. As one of the first companies in Canada to host such an event, Algonquin blazed a trail and left a strong impression with the 65 investors that attended. The event was built around three panels: one discussing environmental issues, one discussing social issues and one discussing governance issues. In this video interview, George Trisic, the company’s chief governance officer, talks about how investors’ demands on ESG have evolved since the Covid-19 outbreak.

Enerflex

Rising star – Stefan Ali

Stefan Ali was brought in as Enerflex’s director of strategy, risk and investor relations to revive the IR function. He brings a different perspective and background to IR, having started his career as a corporate lawyer. Ali says his legal background is ‘invaluable’ because ‘it teaches you to dial in on granular issues and seek solutions. To my mind, the IR function is somewhat similar: we find questions that are important to our stakeholders and create messaging around that.’

Lifetime achievement – Janet Craig

Janet Craig has won more than 20 IR Magazine Awards in Canada across a number of different companies. She says the secret is ‘fear – wanting to make sure the teams I’m a part of add value and get better.’. Intellectual curiosity also plays a huge part in leading IR at some of Canada’s largest companies, she adds. For her, investor relations is a form of problem solving, and harks back to solving quadratic equations as a child.

Craig started her IR career in 1995 and says the way IR has evolved is ‘profound – it’s gone from a largely administrative function that’s also tactical to something that’s incredibly strategic, complex and deals with issues on a second-by-second or minute-by-minute basis.’

Remaining award winners

Awards by research

Best IR by a Canadian company in the US market – Waste Connections
Best in sector: materials (small cap) – Ero Copper Corp
Best in sector: technology & communications – CGI
Best in sector: utilities – Fortis

Awards by nomination

Best IR during a corporate transaction – MediPharm Labs
Best IR website – Aurora Cannabis