The Australasian Investor Relations Association (AIRA) has released an updated version of its best practice investor relations guidelines and has called on companies to lift the bar in communicating important information to shareholders.
The fourth edition of AIRA’s guidelines also calls for live webcasts of annual general meetings, including question and answer sessions. It also recommends that companies consider providing a full transcript of proceedings, including formal speeches and presentations, along with relevant question and answer exchanges of all significant briefings.
In addition, the guidelines suggest that when it comes to investor days and analyst briefings, all questions and answers should be monitored for market-sensitive information and be released immediately to securities exchanges if any inadvertent disclosures are made.
AIRA also suggests all presentations be released prior to the investor day commencing, and uploaded to company websites to enable analysts and investors to digest the information before trading commences.
“We would like to see listed entities tell all shareholders exactly when they are scheduling investor briefings, presentations and webcasts so that more people can find out in a timely manner exactly what is happening,” said AIRA’s CEO, Ian Matheson FAICD.
“Such routine details are not always made widely available, but it is essential to do so if all investors are to be kept fully informed. The details can easily be posted on a company’s own website and more particularly, lodged with ASX and/or NZX.”
Matheson added that regulators have made it clear that they want all investors to be provided with all price sensitive information in a timely manner; therefore it was up to companies to use the communications tools at their fingertips to engage effectively with as many of their shareholders as possible.
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