Introduction 2 Key Findings 3 Future Impact 6 Travel 9 Targeting 13 Macroeconomics 21
In June 2020 IR Magazine produced a report on the initial effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on investor relations. In it we identified a number of changes to working practices, strategic approaches and economic outlook as a result of the pandemic’s early stages. In this report we revisit the subject one year on to examine what has changed in the intervening period. We investigate how IR has adapted to the changes and how both corporate and wider economic performance has fared during this time. We also look forward to IR’s post-pandemic future and what the ongoing and lasting effects will be. The findings in this report are taken from 255 online interviews conducted with IR heads, IROs, fund managers and analysts. Fieldwork for this survey was conducted between April and May 2021. During the course of the report we refer to ‘investors’ and ‘IROs’ for shorthand purposes. In this, ‘investors’ refers to findings from the investment community (fund managers, buy-side analysts, sell-side analysts) and ‘IROs’ refers to both heads of IR and investor relations officers. Findings in this report are broken down using the key regions of North America, Europe and Asia, while IR community findings are segmented by market cap size. For the purposes of this report, cap size is defined as follows:
SMALL CAP – UNDER $1 BN MID-CAP – $1 BN TO UNDER $5 BN LARGE CAP – $5 BN TO UNDER $30 BN MEGA-CAP – $30 BN AND OVER
