I missed this week’s #irchat.  As I was reading through the transcript (which can be accessed here), I thought I would transcribe the discussion for the benefit of everyone.
Typically, three or four questions are asked.  But this week, the first question dominated the hour-long session. @meetthestreet asked:
Q1: Institutional Investor recently wrote about social media’s role in equity research: http://bit.ly/94w06K. Do you think this has legs?
Here is a snippet from the article:
Bolstered by the low cost of online publishing and the rising popularity of blogs, discussion forums and commenting, a growing …

We’re thrilled to announce our latest report on the use of social media by public companies for investor relations.  If you’d like to get right to the report you can download it here.
Last year we released two research reports on Twitter for investor relations.  At that point, our sample told us that 35% were using Twitter for IR, in the current report you’ll see this number is now 65%.
However, it’s not all about Twitter. So we expanded our research to include Facebook, Linked, Blogs, YouTube and SlideShare.  Their respective adoption …

On April 8th, 2010 I presented to a group of investor relations professional in Montreal, Quebec. I was fortunate to present alongside Lorne Gorber, VP, Global Comm. & IR at CGI Group Inc. The following is the deck that I used during the session. It contains updated trends and statistics on the use of social media in the capital markets. I also included a handful of examples of companies that I think are doing a good job at using these new channels. Hope you enjoy the new deck!
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In her article “Should CEOs lose sleep over analyst recommendations” Clare Harrison, IR Magazine’s Deputy Editor, poses the question “How much attention do investors really pay to analyst recommendations?”
I think she raises some interesting points in answering the question. So much so that I’d like to reinforce and provide my two cents from an IRO perspective on those points here.  I’ll also provide some suggested tactics IROs can use to foster relationships and gain credibility with investors, and ways to help them make informed investment decisions about your company.
Recommend …

In early October, I had the honour of partaking in an IR Think Tank session “Spotlight on Social Media” (put on by IR Magazine) in Toronto.   It was at this event that I had the pleasure of meeting Tom Liston an Equity Research Analyst and Director of Research at Versant Partners http://twitter.com/VersantPartners, a boutique investment dealer located in Toronto who was also sitting on the panel with me.
Since the think tank, I have had several conversations with Tom and learned how he leverages social media to gain a “first mover advantage” …

Brunswick Group LLC, recently released results of an online survey to examine if and how new media (which encompassed blogs, message boards, Facebook and Twitter) plays a role in the investment recommendations and decisions of institutional investors and analysts.  The survey was distributed to several thousand buy-side investors and sell-side analysts in the U.S. and Europe in July 2009.  455 analysts and investors responded with a nearly 50/50 split between the sell-side and buy-side, and a similarly even split between respondents based in the United States and Europe. Participant profile …

In spite of the increasing importance of the Internet as a primary source of gathering information, I hadn’t really given much thought about its influence on how analysts form opinions and/or build their models around a specific sector or company to generate research reports.  That was until I listened to Robert Passarella’s webcast “Equity Research in the Age of the Web”.
Robert has spent about 20 years on Wall Street in various roles in equity research, trading operations and sales.  In light of the current economic meltdown (and some inquiries from his family …