The website represents the fundamental building block of communication for an investor relations officer (IRO). Company investor websites vary significantly in utility, usefulness, and flashiness. In our view, the Investor Relations (IR) website sets the tone or personality of your company for investors. One school of thought suggests that IR websites should generate an emotional response. I am not sure emotional and investor relations represent a good mix.
Our view holds that the best IR websites facilitate easy and efficient access to the most relevant investor data. IROs should think about their websites like an eCommerce website. The goal is to have the investor download either one or many of the investor materials on the website. You want to provide an experience that requires the least clicks possible to get to the most valuable information.
Recently, EQS and IR magazine teamed up to do a podcast on what makes a great investor relations website.
What stood out to me from the podcast was the idea that the IR website should generate an emotional response. The investor community would likely agree that they are not looking to have an emotional response when visiting an IR webpage. Please reach out to me if I am wrong. To an investor, the IR webpage represents the fundamental tool used to start learning about a company. Therefore, we believe the primary driver of the best investor websites revolve around the ease and efficient access to the most relevant information, simply put utility.
The Purpose of an IR Website
Most investors spend very little time thinking about the investor website unless the website is glaringly bad (meaning Windows 95), or the utility is poor (information is difficult to find). IROs on the other hand spend significant time thinking about how to optimize their web presence. Not only does the investor website represent the primary building block for communication, but it also allows IR to assess what is important and useful via web analytics.
The IR website allows the IRO to set the tone and demeanor as to how the company wishes to interact with the investor community. If you provide relevant and important information that can be easily accessed by investors, the company clearly signals an interest to engage with investors. If your IR website looks antiquated or fails to provide easy access to information, at a minimum you signal to investors that you do not wish to engage, and at worst you are signaling you are hiding something from the investor community.
The Most Valuable Real Estate on an IR Website
The utility of the website and the information provided will set the tone and personality of your company with investors. If you provide the most relevant information in an easy and efficient format, the investor community will recognize that your firm is open for business. While the building blocks of a good IR website are easy navigation and modern design, the real value of the website revolves around how easily an investor can access the following areas:
Earnings Releases: An investor should be able to access the most recent quarter release on the IR homepage, and should have easy navigation to a repository of past earnings releases.
Current Earnings Call: The IR home page should provide an easy to find link to the webcast of the most recent quarter’s earnings call.
Current Investor Deck: The IR home page include easy access to the most recent investor deck, and should provide quick navigation to past investor decks, or past decks related to investor events.
Most Recent Analyst Day and Deck: If you held an analysts day in the past year, it makes sense to provide a quick link to the webcast and event presentation deck for investors.
SEC Filings: While most fail to read these filings, investors should be able to quickly and easily navigate to your SEC filings from the IR home page.
Analyst Roster: Many IR websites bury the covering analyst roster under a sub heading in then navigation bar. Additionally, many fail to provide contact information for the analyst’s covering their company. In my view, hiding the analyst roster and excluding contact information is like operating a sales website and providing no way to get in touch with the company. The sell-side represents the salesforce for your stock!
Corporate Governance: Investors should be able to easily navigate to a corporate governance section that can provide management bios and board of director bios.
If you are not providing access to these pieces of information, then your IR program is not open for business.
Good and Bad IR Websites
In my mind, the worst IR websites are those that clearly look like they are Web 1.0, have never undergone a modern redesign, and likely are not optimized for mobile viewing. These are typically websites that only use the left half of your computer screen and show significant white space on the right. The best examples are eHealth (EHTH) for those in Digital Healthcare and Omeros (OMER) in biotech. Another example of a bad IR website in my mind was Cerner (CERN), as the design was very clunky and not updated for current web design standards.
To dig a little deeper, let us provide an analysis of two industries Data Center REITs and Containerships. We believe these industry verticals vividly illustrate the wide range of IR website quality and illustrate the good and the bad.
Data Center REITs: In my view, Digital Realty Trust (DLR) operates the best IR website in the industry. Upon landing on their investor page, the investor is treated to a central repository of all things relevant: the call to action or thesis, recent news, upcoming and recent events, key stats, and the featured investor presentation. The website is then easily navigable for an investor to retrieve historical earnings releases, earnings supplements, investor presentations, and sec filings.
When I worked at DFT, I least liked the CyrusOne (CONE) and CoreSite (COR) investor relations pages, which both seem to have undergone a well-thought re-design. Currently, I would say that QTS operates the worst IR page, as the graphics used are stock graphics. Personally, I just find the flow of their page now the most cumbersome.
Containerships: Recently, I did an analysis of 11 containership IR websites. These websites varied significantly in terms of quality and utility. The worst IR websites typically had IR landing pages that were the company stock chart or simply the IR/Company contact information. Many of the companies had good website design, but suffered from poor navigation / curation of content. The worst examples were Diana Shipping (DSX) and Navios Maritime Partners (NMM), among the best were Ship Finance International (SFL), and Genco Shipping and Trading (GNK).
Cyber Security Concern
Today IROs need to ensure that their IR website is not open to cyber attack or viruses. The IRO needs to make sure that his or her vendor can keep the website page safe from attack or hacking.
Conclusion
Good IR website are about utility and facilitating easy and efficient access to important information. To be the best IR website make sure the website provides the most important information, and facilitates easy consumption of said materials. IROs should think about their websites like an eCommerce website. The goal is to have the investor download either one or many of the investor materials on the website. You want to provide an experience that requires the least clicks possible to get to the most valuable information.
