Tardy earnings tweeting reflects badly on IR professionals
PERHAPS I’m old-fashioned, but when a company uses a service like Twitter to tell followers about company earnings, I expect them to make a reasonable effort to post the news simultaneously to other channels.
5 ways to attract investors to your IR website
WITH all the new opportunities they have to engage investors on various social media platforms, public companies remain somewhat focused on driving traffic back to their own corporate websites.
Google brings transparency to the earnings call question queue
ANALYSTS and investors have long complained that management at some companies manipulate the flow of information to the market and play favorites by carefully screening which questions they take on their earnings calls. Now Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has taken the lead to bring transparency to the earnings call question queue by inviting analysts — [...]
Dell’s earnings web leak offers 3 lessons for all IROs
WHEN Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) accidentally posted earnings information on the web prior to their official announcement last week, it was a little like seeing a poster child for online disclosure fall from grace. None of the usual crop of online disclosure pundits uttered a word about it, as if to do so would cast [...]
eBay’s lawyers are wrong to delete earnings call information
eBay and other leading tech companies’ shallow earnings call archiving practices raise questions about their transparency.
Microvision opens up earnings call via blog
SEVERAL months ago, Microvision (NASDAQ:MVIS) IR specialist Tiffany Bradford set out to research how small-cap companies were using blogs for investor relations. She was referred to me by Shel Holtz, ABC, one of the leading advisors on the use of technology in public relations and corporate communications. I didn’t have a lot of concrete examples [...]
BGC proves notice-and-access releases work
BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ: BGCP), a small-cap inter-dealer broker of financial instruments, yesterday announced its earnings using the notice-and-access news release method we have been advocating for several years. Despite heated hand-waving by one big PR wire service — and some hand-wringing by ourselves — the earnings release process went off without a hitch, even [...]
Time to open up your earnings calls to bloggers
AT HIS first press conference Monday night, US President Barack Obama made history at 8:52 pm ET by calling on blogger Sam Stein of the Huffington Post to be among only 14 reporters to ask a question. The recognition of a blogger alongside mainstream media outlets such as the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg and national [...]
SEC's new guidance for websites and blogs posted
THE US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has published its 47-page interpretive release that explains how companies can use their websites and blogs to meet its requirements for public disclosure under Regulation FD. Here’s a Scribd version of the complete release, which can also be downloaded in PDF from the SEC’s website. See my initial [...]
SEC's new guidance for websites imminent
THE US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is slated to consider publishing long-awaited new guidance governing how companies can use their websites to communicate with investors. According to a notice, the commission will meet Wednesday to consider publishing the “interpretive release” that is expected to address a number of important issues that could set precedents [...]
Lack of earnings call archives attracts attention
A lack of earnings conference call archives on companies’ investor relations websites has attracted attention from an SEC committee, but it is not suggesting regulatory action. Indeed, a lack of archives might be a useful indicator for investors.
SEC posts text of proposed XBRL rule
JUST in time for the weekend, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today posted the full text of the proposed rules for mandatory XBRL filings for domestic and foreign public companies. The proposed rules (embedded below) apply to domestic and foreign public companies that prepare their financial statements according to U.S. GAAP, and foreign [...]
IR research the Web 2.0 way — free!
AS THE US first quarter earnings season officially got underway with yesterday’s results from Dow component Alcoa Inc., IR departments were preparing to monitor their peers’ results and release their own numbers. Knowing what competitors are saying and getting a feel for the types of questions analysts are asking can help companies prepare for their [...]

