So, people are telling you that your company has a liquidity problem and giving you a variety of different reasons for it. What contributes to it? Small float? Misunderstood story? Lack of growth? Lack of awareness? Little to no retail?

Each of these can contribute to a lack of liquidity. The belief that simply addressing one of these causes, will solve your liquidity challenge is false. In reality, there are no quick fixes. Improving liquidity requires a multi-pronged strategic plan. Fundamentally, the more compelling and believable your growth prospects, and the more people that know about them, the more liquidity you will have. (more…)

Every fall the CICA (Canadian Institute for Chartered Accountants) Corporate Reporting Awards recognize excellence in disclosure practices. Having participated as a judge in the Electronic Disclosure category for three years, I have taken a close look at a fair number of websites. 

Many of the same names rise to the top each year.  These tend to be large-cap companies with abundant resources to devote to the development and maintenance of their IR site – for example, PotashCorp, Telus, BMO and Nexen. 

It is not feasible for most issuers to match the efforts of these perennial leaders.  But some of the “best practices” that differentiate the web sites of these issuers are easily attainable.  And it has nothing to do with six-figure design budgets and special effects.  The most important objective is to provide investors with the information they need – in as user-friendly a format as possible – to enable them to make an informed investment decision. (more…)

You have a day full of investor meetings planned and you just finished several hours updating your PowerPoint presentation and have now sent it for printing. Like in the past, you were planning on uploading the slide deck as a PDF to your website following your meetings to share with other investors; however after all that time and effort, you wonder what else can be done to maximize the return from your investor presentation. How can you expand its reach? (more…)

With annual report season right around the corner, many public issuers are wondering whether to create an online version or not.

Our advice is if you choose to do one, it needs to be more than just an exact replica of your printed piece put online.  Think book versus movie. The movie is an interpretation of the book, not a verbatim recital.  No one is going to pay money to watch someone read The Lord of The Rings. A copy and paste of your printed report simply won’t cut it.

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Intel generated a fair amount of positive feedback from the investment community following its decision to publish – in advance of the recent earnings conference call – the CFO’s prepared remarks. The rationale was simple: to better prepare the audience and allow more time for interactive Q&A with management. 

We have always counseled clients that the conference call remarks should not regurgitate the press release and MD&A.  Analysts consistently tell us they don’t want that; they can and do read the materials themselves.  The remarks should provide context, insight and explanation on key metrics, not a painfully long review of every line item in the financial statements. And the call is an important opportunity to discuss operational progress, review performance against strategy, and outline upcoming milestones.

So, should you follow the Intel model next quarter? (more…)

Every public company loves goods news.  Sign a new contract?  Win a new customer? Get positive results from a field trial?  Put out a press release and chances are that the markets will respond favorably and drive up the share price.

Bad news, on the other hand, causes too many issuers to lose perspective. Some companies will want to schedule an announcement after market close on a Friday night.  Worse, others will want to go into silent mode unless disclosure is absolutely required.   The belief, of course, is that the company’s share price will suffer once negative news is released. (more…)