Tag: investor relations

Investor Relations 2.0

ebay_logo

eBay took a bold move yesterday, using Web 2.0 tools for investor relations. During its first analysts’ meeting in three years, eBay management had a live twitter stream with live coverage of the meeting and bloggers with just less than live coverage of the meeting.

The securities industry seems to be struggling with Web 2.0 tools. (In fairness, most industries are struggling to with Web 2.0 tools.) Blame uncertainty about these relatively new tools. Blame securities class action law suits. Blame the SEC for a lack of guidance. It looks like eBay was tired of excuses and decided to jump into the world of Investor Relations 2.0.

An article from Dominic Jones of the IR Web Report caught my eye: SEC Disclaimers in the Age of Twitter. Was eBay really going to use Twitter as part of its investor relations? YES.

Apparently Richard Brewer had already been live-tweeting eBay’s quarterly earnings conference calls. Management knew he been using his eBay Ink Blog to report the quarterly earnings results, but were unaware of his use of Twitter. He was called in to meet with the lawyers. But rather than shut him down, they worked out some best practices.  They came up with New Social Media Guidelines for Reporting Company Information.

“Plain and simple, eBay Inc. is a public company and, as such, must comply with SEC regulations. We feel that these guidelines will make that compliance more transparent. What follows is by no means a final set of micro-blogging/live-blogging best practices for companies but it is a step – and a very significant one at that. Something that I realize I will have to refine and evolve over time.”

That seems very sensible. The SEC’s Guidance on the use of company web sites (SEC Release 34-58288) does not give the clearest guidance but certainly opens the way for public companies to use 2.0 tools as part of their investor relations.

Richard kicked off his live Twitter coverage of the meeting with the new disclaimer crafted just for Twitter:

ebay twitter disclaimers

Which included a link to the a longer legal disclaimer. Its more than 140 characters, but still very concise.

An interesting thing about Twitter is the ability to tag the updates, allowing others to follow on that same topic. Richard used #ebayinc. This allowed you to follow not just Richard’s updates, but all of the reactions to Richard’s updates.

Richard also compiled the twitter updates into a traditional blog post: eBay Inc. Portfolio Roadmap Preview by John Donahue. (Did I just call a blog post traditional?)

With all of that live information and feedback, eBay’s regular investor relations page looks very cold and lifeless. It does not seem to have as much information. Perhaps it is even less relevant?

In the end, Web 2.0 tools are just communication tools. They are not that different than traditional read-only web pages or email. They do allow for easier, faster and more robust communications. You can see the difference in the comparison between the traditional eBay Investor Relations website and the eBay Ink 2.0 website.

How is your company using web 2.0 tools for investor relations?

See:

Blogs for Investor Relations

thompson-logo1Louis Thompson, Jr. has an article in Compliance Week on using blogs for investor relations. Blogs: If Used Properly, an Investor-Friendly Tool (subscription required).

Louis focuses on the Dell Shares blog used as an investor relations tool by Dell, Inc. and the GE Reports blog used by General Electric. Since this is a blog, I was interested to see what he had to say about them.

Many of the issues and concerns that Louis brings up are not about blogs but some of the functionality of blogs. After all, a blog is just a publishing platform. It is how you use that generates value or creates problems.

All of the SEC rules about company’s distributing material information applies to blog as they do to any other company communication.

The big benefit of a blog is that it will send out a notification when there is new information. This saves me from having to come back to check for information or cramming my email inbox.  For an investor relations professional, this saves you a step of writing message and then sending an email. The blog compresses those two steps into one.

The second benefit is the interactivity. You can hear back from your investors. This is a new area and probably a little scary. You can hear criticism. You can hear compliments. For most people it is hard to take the criticism. (Personally I have come to dread silence over criticism. At least with criticism you know someone is paying attention. I find this better than being ignored.)

Certainly, you want to get some good legal advice in crafting the disclaimers and for dealing with comments on a blog. As Bruce Carton and I discussed in our Webinar on 2.0 for Securities and Compliance Professionals, blogs are just communications tools. You shouldn’t put anything in a blog that you would not put in an email or a story published on the front page of the newspaper.

Disclaimer: According to his biography, Louis is a partner with Beacon Advisors, Inc. That company is not affiliated with my employer.