Investment research

[MCN]

Hi all,

 

I’m curious to know if investors find a company’s investor relations web page helpful at all and, if so, how much do you rely on it for researching and understanding a company?

And whether or not a bad impression from a company’s IR website ever put you off?

 

I imagine for professional investors and most on this board this will come across as a dumb question but I’m interested to understand if a company’s website, particularly its investor relations page, might have any effect on investor interest in that company and whether having a crappy IR page discourages potential investors from digging further, especially if documents such as financial and regulatory filings are not easily available.

 

This question comes to mind after my experience digging around in the Japanese market a few years back. I would often get somewhat discouraged when I could not do the in depth research that is possible in the US market.

Largely this was down to the fact that there is relatively little information available in English. 

But I was thinking that one possible reason so many small and mid cap Japanese companies were so cheap back then, was because a large part of the investing world (i.e. non Japanese speaking investors) simply could not obtain the information they require to feel comfortable investing and so avoided the market.

 

I would be interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this ….

 

[Travis Wiedower]

I find investor presentations (which are often solely found on the IR page) helpful, especially as an overview when first looking at a company. I rarely judge a company for its website but it has happened.