In our latest survey of the IR community, we asked what respondents considered to have been their key IR challenges in 2019 and what particular areas they would be focusing on for their 2020 IR objectives. We also surveyed the investment community to find out what it considers to be the key challenges and objectives for investor relations teams in 2019 and 2020. The questions we asked were open comment, allowing respondents to give whatever answer they wished. We then categorized each response according to the subject and focus of the challenge or objective. For example, if the subject of the challenge was ‘targeting’, this would be categorized as an investor-related challenge. Similarly, ‘share price’ would be a market-related challenge and ‘China trade deal’ a
macroeconomic challenge. Research for the IR Magazine Global IR Survey was conducted during Q1 2020, and the Global Investor Survey was conducted during Q4 2019. Both surveys took place before the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic could be fully appreciated and consequently reaction to it is not included in this report. Findings in this report are broken down using the key regions of North America, Europe and Asia. Results from investors are also divided into buy side and sell side, while IR community findings are segmented by market cap size. For the purposes of this report, cap size is defined as follows: