Respond to your stakeholders - in time

Financial stakeholders and journalists expect a suitable answer to their urgent questions as soon as possible. Research shows that only two third of Dutch listed companies answered within 24 hours. Even worse: only one third of not listed companies answered in time. Does your company meet the needs of financial stakeholders?

In October Jungle Rating will publish the outcomes of the research on the quality of online financial communications, under the authority of ‘Het Financieele Dagblad’. As part of the research, we checked the response on e-mail questions of 50 listed and 20 not listed companies. See for the selected companies and more information on the research our FD Henri Sijthoff-Prijs page (in Dutch).

Our market analysts pretended to be private investors or financially interested and asked the following questions (in Dutch).

We asked all listed companies

1. When is the next analyst meeting and will it be webcast?
2. What is your dividend policy and when is the next dividend payment?

We asked all non-listed companies:

1. Do you (voluntarily) comply with the Dutch Corporate Governance Code?
2. Does your company announces semi-annual results? If so, when will they be published?

What did we look for?

Financial stakeholders and journalists expect a suitable answer to their urgent questions, preferably within the same working day. They appreciate a personal answer. That way, they will know your company takes them seriously. What did we look for in the answers?

• We checked whether the companies answered in a timely manner (within 24 to 48 hours),
• reviewed the completeness of each answer,
• checked whether the answer was personalised (salutation & sender details).

Striking results

There is a large difference between listed and not listed companies. Over two third of the listed companies answered within 24 hours, compared to less than one third of the not listed companies.

What companies did a good job?

Some companies exceeded:

• KPMG was the only company that specifically indicated the response time: “We will answer within two working days”. No listed company dared to give a specific response time
• A few companies answered within 10 minutes: Exact, Fugro and Stork. MacIntosh replied even within 3 minutes time!

A complete and personalised answer: best practices

What is a good answer? What satisfies the journalist, analyst or investor? Two best practices:

We asked ASM International when they had the next analyst meeting and whether it would be webcast. The company replied that there would be a conference call on July 31, at 15:00 hrs. The executive assistant also mentions it is possible to call in on the meeting and offers to put the sender on the mailing list.

E-mail response – ASM International (answer in Dutch)

When asking Heineken the same question, the assistant IR replies with the exact dates and hours of:

• the publication of the results
• the press release
• the analyst meeting

She also refers to the calendar on the Heineken website for more information.

E-mail response – Heineken (answer in Dutch)

Tips, based on these best practices

1. Answer as specific as possible: provide date and time of an event
2. Be pro-active: ASM International asks if I want to be put on the mailing list of press releases, Heineken provides information on not only the meeting, but the publication and the press release as well.
3. Provide complete information or use a direct link to a specific page on the website for more information (in this case: the calendar)
4. Create standard response e-mails and personalise them for each e-mail question. This will save you time and will provide the stakeholder with a complete and correct answer.
5. Be personal: Heineken addresses the sender ‘Dear Mr. de Jong’, thanks him for his question and provides name, address, e-mail address, URL, phone number and fax for further contact. Heineken is willing to put effort in stakeholder communication: “do not hesitate to contact me if necessary”
6. Apply these tips for other stakeholders as well. Think of customers or job seekers

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