A new era of Asian achievement
Welcome to the report of the Asian research undertaken by IR Magazine this year to identify the region’s best performers in investor relations.One surprising feature of the results is that 15 of the top 20 companies – and all of the top three – in this year’s South East Asia rankings hail from Thailand. That makes the 11 Hong Kong companies in the Greater China top 20 seem relatively unsurprising. Perhaps we should be more surprised that just four of Greater China’s top 20 are from China, especially considering that five of the top 20 are from little Taiwan.Of course, we have to take into account the history of capital markets in the various countries but that makes relatively little difference to the success of Thai companies. So why is Thailand so good at investor relations? Perhaps one reason is that 56 percent of the South East Asian respondents to this year’s research are analysts and investors from Thailand. But that’s far from a full answer to the question. It suggests, more significantly, a greater interest in investor relations more generally in Thailand, among both the corporate generators of IR materials and the recipients of their output. Interestingly, Indorama Ventures – the best performer overall in South East Asia – is a mid-cap Thai company, with a total points score of 302, just ahead of the best large-cap company, PTT Exploration and Production, on 298 points.These points are all well below the much more widely followed companies in the larger capital markets of Greater China. The top company there – China Resources Beer (Holdings) – hails from Hong Kong, where just 31 percent of Greater China respondents are based, and it achieves an impressive total points score of 1,649. That’s more than 1,000 points ahead of the next-best Hong Kong performer, BC Technology Group, on 510 points, and even further ahead of Taiwan’s leading scorer, Hon Hai Precision Industry, which has 384 points. Regardless of where the individual companies come from, however, they have all performed very well to achieve leading scores in this research. After all, respondents are free to vote for any company they choose, with no geographical restrictions. To make an impact on the demanding analysts and investors who answer our questionnaires, companies have to provide a very high service level in terms of the quality of information they provide, their accessibility and their knowledge base. So we offer our congratulations to all those listed in this report.Janet Dignan, November 2022
