Q4 Blog

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” and how he (and other analysts) use Twitter, blogs, facebook and various other channels to gain a more detailed mosaic of the company.  I found it quite interesting to learn that in a number of cases Tom has read information on a blog or social network that caused him to dig in further.

Seemed the best way to share Tom’s views was through an interview.  Last week we spent about 25 minutes talking about the capital markets, research, investor relations and social media.  I encourage you to listen or download the audio file:

Download MP3 File (11 MB)

During the interview you’ll hear Tom’s thoughts on:

• How his daily research activities have been affected by the social web
• How he manages risk when obtaining information on financial blogs and social networks
• Whether the use of social networks by a company influences his intent to cover them
• What kind of content companies should be sharing
• How financial blogs such as Seeking Alpha have changed the financial landscape

Hope you find it interesting.  Please let me know what you think.

Social networks are having a dramatic impact in helping marketers and public relations professionals increase brand awareness and build new relationships with consumers.  But how have these tools been adopted in the highly regulated world of investor relations?

To answer this question Q4 analyzed 80 public companies and their use of Twitter during the Q2 2009 earnings season.  Some of the findings of the report which were issued in a press release today revealed that:

• 55% are using Twitter for investor relations.
• 48% are using Twitter to engage with their audience.
• 34% of the companies were from the technology sector, including Cisco, Dell, Oracle and Sun to name a few.
• 68% provided a link to their Q2 quarterly earnings release.

Read more…

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 and friends), he put this presentation together to answer the question “What is happening on Wall Street?”

In the past, the market was driven by speculation – people were making decisions whether to buy or sell a stock based solely on the information they had.  However, this prompted the need to find out and ask “If I am making a buy,  why is someone else selling?”  Does someone have access to proprietary information that I don’t?  There has to be a reason why they are taking the opposite stance.  With the Internet in its infancy access to proprietary information sources such as Bloomberg terminals were limited to a select group. Others were making decisions based on what they were reading in the newspapers.

Read more…