Q4 Blog

Times have changed but have your web communications kept pace? Today’s more discerning investor is more open to portfolio diversification – which may mean that you need to provide different information than you are offering now.

Join us on Thursday, January 14th at 4:00 p.m. ET as we share top IR Website improvements to meet today’s challenging economic environment.  If you’re involved in your company’s IR website, this webinar will show some great examples of best practices from the world’s leading organizations as well as innovative small cap companies and how you can apply them to your own website.

Register now and learn 3 critical improvements to make to your website in 2010:

1. Key information to include for potential new investors in this economy.
2. Using social media effectively to increase your reach (and website traffic) and to protect your share value – with case stories and examples.
3. New interactive technologies – what kind of technologies increase user engagement and add value.

If you have any questions that you’d like us to address please leave a comment below and we’ll be sure to answer during the webinar.

On September 17, I moderated a lively discussion on monitoring social media with Richard Brewer-Hay, Manager of Social Media Strategy and Chief Blogger at eBay and Serena Ehrlich, VP Social Media, Startup Army and past president of the NIRI L.A. and Dallas/Fort Worth Chapters.

They presented some great insights for IROs into why you should be listening to the conversation, how to sift through the conversations, what you should be listening for and when to engage.  They ended off with some valuable tips on some free and paid-for monitoring tools to help you get started.

What follows are the presentation and video versions from that session.

Presentation on SlideShare:

Video posted on Vimeo:

Monitoring Social Media for Investor Relations from Darrell Heaps on Vimeo.

I recently had the opportunity to sit on a panel to discuss social media and investor relations.  The event was put on by the NIRI Cleveland chapter in downtown Cleveland.  The panel consisted of myself and Matt Lehman – Web Experience Director at Progressive.com and was moderated by Chuck Hemann, Research Manager for Dix and Eaton.

The following post is what I consider to be the top 5 points from the session:

Read more…

Join us on Thursday, September 17th at 4:00 p.m. ET for an interactive discussion on social media monitoring with Richard Brewer-Hay, Manager of Social Media Strategy and Chief Blogger at eBay and Serena Ehrlich, VP Social Media, Startup Army and past president of the NIRI L.A. and Dallas*Fort Worth Chapters.

Register now and reserve your spot to hear our experts provide insights into:

1. How to sift through the volume of online conversations and help determine which ones you should pay particular attention to.
2. Identifying objectives and how that information can be used to improve your investor relations strategy.
3. Both free and paid-for monitoring tools to help you get started.

If you have any questions that you’d like us to address please leave a comment below and we’ll be sure to answer during the webinar.

Join us on Thursday, July 16th from 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. ET as we share tips on how to integrate social media tools into your current IR program.  Social media is a great way to increase your audience reach, empower people to engage with your company and give them a better understanding of your investment proposition. 

Register here to learn innovative ways to:

1. Improve your discoverability so your company is easier to find, exposing you to new investors and markets.
2. Package your content so it can be shared, disseminated and republished across the web to millions of retail and institutional investors.
3. Start using free monitoring tools to listen to what is being said about your company.

The Q4 team is off to the NIRI National Conference in Hollywood, FL from June 7-10.  For those who are attending we are looking forward to meeting with you, so stop by booth #504 to:

• Find out why social media is now a key aspect of investor relations in lowering capital costs, why it doesn’t need to be difficult and how to responsibly get involved.

• Learn about XBRL filings that can be viewed in an easy to ready display on your website.

For those of you, who can’t make it, we will be providing regular updates on Twitter and posting on our blog.

I’m pleased to announce that we have closed our latest round of funding, bringing the total raised to $3M (CDN) since the fall of 2006. Investors include a mix of institutional funders and angels.  You can access the full press release on our web site:

Q4 Web Systems Closes $1.2M in Funding for Web Disclosure

Here are a couple of my quotes from the release:

I’m very pleased to close this latest round of funding in this current market climate. We continue to receive validation for our business model from the addition of new clients, business partners and our ability to attract investment. This latest round of funding will enable us to continue scaling the business while we roll-out our next generation platform in 2009.

This regulatory guidance is a significant change to how material information is distributed to the market. Not only does it lower costs for issuers, but it also creates opportunities for a number of companies, of which we are one. This investment is a validation of the market potential for our platform and web disclosure in general.

At the NIRI and CIRI annual conferences this year we had a promotion to give away a bunch of iPods for people who signed up for Q4 PRESS and responded using their BlackBerry. The promotion was a huge success and we had tons of people using Q4 PRESS on their BlackBerry for the first time.  We heard from numerous people about how they enjoyed using PRESS and being part of such an innovative promotion. 

Here is a list of the winners, we hope all of you enjoy many hours of great music on your iPod!

NIRI
Charles Ives – Hutchinson Technology Incorporated
Randy Mah – EPCOR Preferred Equity Inc.
Tim Thorp – ALLETE, Inc.
Amy Goldberg – Pitney Bowes Inc.
Ken Lockwood – Fluor Corporation
Bruce Macpherson – BB&T Corporation
Paul Vincent – Swift Energy Company
Amy Wakeham – Leap Wireless International, Inc.
Crystal Hacker – Leggett & Platt, Inc.

CIRI
John Vincic – BarnesMcInerney Inc.
Hazel Winchester – Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd.
David Carey – ARC Energy Trust
Marie Fenez – Canadian Oil Sands Trust
Jamie Macintosh – Innovium Capital Corp.
Susanne Hickey - Magna International Inc.
Jessica Ruffen – Medical Ventures Corp.
Jeff Edwards – Canadian Pacific Railway Limited
Colin Petryk – Fording Canadian Coal Trust

Last week Inmet Mining went live on Q4 WEB, keep an eye out for a press release over the next couple of days. I’ll update this post once it crosses the wire. Inmet’s stock has seen significant growth over the last couple of years and we are thrilled to have them join the Q4 family.

You can visit the Inmet site at: www.inmetmining.com

Q4 Web Systems, Q4 WEB, Q4, Investor Relations, IR Web Sites, Disclosure, Compliance

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, Q4 WEB, Q4, Investor Relations, IR Web Sites, Disclosure, Compliance

Earlier this week we announced the closing of latest round of funding. Here’s the full press release:

Financing to fund ongoing development of innovative workflow compliance and disclosure solutions and expanded sales and marketing efforts

Q4 Web Systems Inc. (“Q4 Web Systems” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that it has closed $1.8M CDN in private placement financing from investors including a Schedule A Canadian bank.  The proceeds of the financing will be used by the Company to expand sales and marketing activities and accelerate the development of Q4 Web System’s innovative suite of workflow and collaboration solutions for managing capital markets disclosure and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
“We’ve grown rapidly over the past year and are pleased with our investors’ confidence in our company, our products and our plans for expansion across North America,” says Darrell Heaps, President and CEO of Q4 Web Systems.  “Increased regulation has strained the resources of issuers who are challenged to balance Sarbanes-Oxley compliance with corporate disclosure and the expectations of real-time transparency “  said Mr. Heaps.  “Our suite of innovative solutions addresses the management, tracking and distribution of disclosure and automates many tasks, saving time and money while speeding the delivery of material information to the market. “

Q4 Web Systems’ products aid in the certification of disclosure controls and procedures as specified in Sarbanes-Oxley Act section 302 and Canadian Securities Administrators’ Multilateral Instrument 52-109 and streamline compliance with CEO/CFO certification and Bill 198.  They do so by automatically routing information upward and generating time-stamped, auditable records of all viewers, versions, comments, edits and approvals.

About Q4 Web Systems
Q4 Web Systems is a leading provider of end-to-end disclosure management software. help publicly-traded companies increase efficiency, reduce compliance risk and gain complete in-house control over their disclosure. Q4’s innovative solutions automate many of the manual tasks related to disclosure, saving issuers time and money while speeding the delivery of their material information to the market. Companies across North America rely on Q4Web Systems to manage their disclosure more efficiently, more effectively and with less risk.

For further information: please visit http://www.q4websystems.com/ or contact: Darrell Heaps, President and CEO, Q4 Web Systems Inc., darrellh@q4websystems.com, Tel: 1-877-426-7829, or (416) 626-7829 ext. 222

Technorati Tags: Q4 Web Systems, Q4, Venture Capital, Disclosure, Investor Relations, financing, software