
Earnings calls “intrinsically public,” says transcript service
SEEKING Alpha CEO David Jackson, whose company ranks as the largest provider of free earnings call transcripts, says companies have no grounds to claim copyright over their calls.

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.
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 [...]
We've acquired Thomson Financial's IR website business
Please note the date of this post (and the many clues throughout) should tell you it can’t be trusted. AFTER several weeks of intense negotiations, I’m proud to announce today that my company last night signed a binding agreement to purchase the investor relations website hosting and webcasting business of Thomson Financial. The Thomson Financial [...]
Talking about transparency
I WAS interviewed for 45 minutes last Friday by well-known communications consultant Shel Holz for a book he is co-authoring on the topic of “practical transparency.” Shel is one of the thought leaders on the topic of communications and technology. He has written and spoken about it extensively over the years, in various books, reports, [...]
Canadian IR websites underutilized, study finds
CANADIAN investor relations departments are failing to take advantage of web technology to communicate essential information and provide services to their investors, a study commissioned by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) has found. As part of a broader review of corporate reporting, a study group comprised of accounting and investor relations experts evaluated [...]
Takeover bid sites, old-economy style
WITH tech titans Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) poised for a brawl, it might be useful for the two to see examples of companies that are right now using the Web to effectively present their bid propaganda. Ironically, the examples I have to share, whipped up after a quick Google News search [...]
Democratizing the earnings call
INVESTORS in US-listed stocks will notice something different this quarter when they visit Yahoo! Finance to catch up on the latest corporate earnings results. For the first time, they will have free access to full-text transcripts of earnings conference calls on approximately 2,500 companies thanks to Seeking Alpha, a firm started by former Wall Street [...]
What to do about slumping IR traffic
LET’S just assume that the Alexa trends I reported earlier this week are reasonably accurate and investors are deserting cookie-cutter IR websites in droves. That might not be such a stretch given that no one has stepped forward to dispute Alexa’s numbers with their own figures. If it is true, and I personally can’t imagine [...]
Traffic to Thomson IR websites slumps
IN WHAT may be an indication that U.S. IR websites are no longer able to attract and hold the interest of investors, traffic to IR websites hosted by Thomson Financial has slumped to all-time lows, according to the Alexa website information company. Alexa, owned by Amazon.com, measures traffic only of people who have the Alexa [...]
Transcripts a sign of transparency
WHY don’t more companies provide transcripts of their earnings conference calls and investor presentations on their websites? Of the 525 large-cap companies whose websites we review, only 12% are currently providing transcripts of their earnings calls on their investor relations websites. It’s NOT because investors don’t want them. There wouldn’t be a transcript industry if [...]
IR website vendors are failing IROs
By Dominic Jones IT TAKES less than 30 seconds for anyone with a browser to set up a website and start publishing and building an audience. They have immediate access to a vast array of free tools to incorporate into their websites, from free email alerts to free video, even free stock charts and market [...]
Push your presentations to Yahoo! Finance
A NEW service aims to improve the reach and economics of executives’ investor presentations by distributing them on the popular Yahoo! Finance website and exposing them to bloggers and their audiences. Seeking Alpha, an aggregator of finance commentary from over 200 bloggers, is offering to transcribe companies’ presentations at investor conferences and distribute them on [...]