WE ARE pleased to introduce today the Investis Online IR Rankings, an unique free feature that will help investor relations professionals identify companies that are international leaders in online IR communications.
The initial rankings cover major international stock indexes, including the S&P 100 index of the largest US companies, the FTSE 100 of the largest UK-listed companies, the DAX index of blue chip German companies, the Italian FTSE MIB index, and Finland’s OMXH 25. New indexes will be added in future quarterly updates to eventually cover about 800 companies, which will be reviewed twice per year.
The evaluations are conducted by Investis, a leading corporate website service provider based in London, and validated through random sampling by IR Web Report. Investis has been evaluating corporate websites for its IQ Benchmarking service since 2008. The Online IR Rankings are an offshoot of its corporate website rankings and use an IR-focused scoring system devised by IR Web Report.
German and Finnish companies strongest
Based on their total scores, German DAX companies rank highest with a median score of 61.9 out of 100. Finland’s OMXH 25 companies follow close behind with a median total score of 61.3. FTSE 100 companies ranked third with a median total score of 53.9 points.
German and Finnish companies serve current investors equally well, but Finnish companies score higher for catering to the needs of prospective investors. The DAX and FTSE 100 companies, however, demonstrated a higher level of technical expertise than their counterparts in the other indexes.
The overall top-ranked company for online IR is Germany’s Deutsche Post, which achieved a total score of 80.1. Other German companies ranking highly include Bayer (73.4) and BASF (71.7). The highest ranked Finnish company was Kone Oyj (68.3) followed by Stora Enso (67.5) and Metso Group (66.9).
Despite being third among the indexes ranked, FTSE 100 companies occupy the most top 30 positions. Nine UK-based companies make the top 30, led by Aviva with a total score of 72.7, followed by British American Tobacco (71.0) and Centrica (71.0).
Deutsche Post scored highest overall.
US companies fare poorly
With the rankings published today, Investis has for the first time included the US S&P 100 companies in its coverage universe. The results show that US blue-chip companies as a group share the lowest median total scores with companies in Italy.
Only one US company – General Electric (65.3) — ranked in the top 30 companies, while 6 Italian companies are included in the top 30. However, the overall performance of Italian companies is pulled down by a relatively large number of companies with weak scores. Of the lowest-scoring 30 companies in the rankings, more than one-third are Italian companies.
US companies scored lowest overall for providing information to prospective investors. They scored second-lowest for providing information important to their current investors and tied for last with Italian companies for their expertise in using web technologies.
Serving current and prospective investors
Total scores in the rankings are based in large measure on how well companies cater to current investors and analysts who follow them, as well as the information and services available to potential investors.
Deutsche Post scored highest for meeting the requirements of current investors, followed by ENI SpA of Italy, and then Aviva, BASF and Bayer.
For serving the needs of prospective investors, Italy’s Unicredit scored highest, followed by ENI and then Deutsche Post and Kone Oyj. For technical expertise, ENI performed best, followed by Bayer and Royal Dutch Shell.
How to use the rankings
The rankings published today provide IR departments with a way to identify companies with outstanding online IR practices and then to compare their own practices to the leaders’.
You can filter companies according to their total scores as well as 3 subtotals for current investors, prospective investors and technical expertise. Filtering the results can yield vastly different results so we urge you to use the subtotals. For instance, if you want to see companies whose online IR practices are technically superior, sort them according to the technical expertise score.
We have posted a detailed backgrounder about the scoring methodology and welcome any input from you on how we can improve it. Any questions about individual companies’ scores should be directed to Investis at the following email address IRrankings@investis.com.
Dominic (bio & disclosures) is IR Web Report‘s founder and an online investor relations consultant. He advises leading public companies and investor relations service providers worldwide on using the web for disclosure, engagement and profile building. You can contact him via the contacts page.
Subscribe to feed