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How to Transition to Virtual Shareholder Meetings During the COVID-19 Pandemic

By ICR
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As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, public companies are needing to adapt to new ways to conduct normal business in a virtual world, including holding annual meetings, investor days, participating in investor conferences and outreaching to new investors. As we all adapt to this new current reality, we wanted to provide some advice and resources on how to optimize these activities.

Benefits of Virtual Shareholder Meetings and Investor Days
While face-to-face meetings can promote relationship-building, virtual events offer a range of benefits:

  1. Increased Visibility

Virtual events are an efficient way to keep your shareholders informed on the fundamentals of your business, even when in-person business has been put on hold. We have observed that investors are using this recent market correction to find new ideas that they may have missed out on. By hosting virtual meetings and analyst days, you can remain visible with investors and establish your company as a good potential investment when these market risks subside.

  1. Simplified Scheduling

If you had investor or shareholder meetings on the calendar prior to the spread of COVID-19, the transition to a virtual event is typically very simple. Investors, shareholders, and analysts who were scheduled to attend will already have that time blocked off on their calendar.

  1. Continue to Meet Milestones

While it may not be business as usual, milestones still need to be met as promised. For example, if your company was scheduled to present recent clinical data at a medical meeting, introduce a new product or release updated software, you must still communicate that the status of those projects — and hosting a virtual meeting is the workaround.

  1. Time and Cost Savings

Without facility and hotel fees, both you and your attendees will likely experience cost savings. Plus, virtual meetings can likely be scheduled for a shorter time frame than in-person meetings, which can encourage attendance and allow everyone involved to quickly get back to their other business priorities.

Tips for Hosting a Virtual Shareholder Meetings and Investor Days
With the right preparation and technology, you can still conduct these meetings successfully. Here are our recommendations for hosting virtual meetings:

  1. Choose the Right Platform

There are many platforms available that can deliver a seamless virtual event experience to your attendees. Some of the more sophisticated programs offer a complete end-to-end virtual meeting experience, including video, slides, Q&A management, and even voting functionality.

When choosing a platform, consider whether you need a mobile-friendly platform to provide your attendees with additional flexibility. Also make sure your platform offers appropriate security options. When hosting virtual shareholder meetings, for example, you may want to provide each attendee with a control number used to log in, so you can carefully control attendance and ensure accurate voting. (See below for a summary of platform options)

  1. Notify Attendees

If you are replacing an in-person event with a virtual event, it’s critical to make sure your attendees are aware of the change. Issue a press release and follow up with email messaging to let investors and shareholders know how to access the meeting. Also be aware that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently issued guidance around virtual shareholder meetings.

  1. Have a Plan for Handling Q&A, Voting and Other Engagement

While the main messaging for the meeting will be fairly similar to what you’d need for an in-person meeting (e.g., a script, a speaker, and a PowerPoint deck), you’ll need to consider how to facilitate other means of engagement, like your Q&A and voting. Several technology platforms offer integrated tools that make this easy — so, for example, an attendee can simply type in a question during the presentation, and your company leaders can address it when it comes time for the Q&A.

In the face of the Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic, businesses must be flexible. Transitioning to virtual shareholder meetings and other events can keep your business moving — and benefit attendees as well. If you have questions or need more help in transitioning to virtual events, please reach out.

Virtual Meeting Technology Providers

  1. End to end solution for Annual Shareholder Meeting: These vendors offer both virtual meeting platform and an integrated voting management tool for a complete Annual Shareholder Meeting experience.
  1. Virtual meeting platform for non-annual meeting shareholder engagement:
  • Zoom
    • Cost effective way to setup 1-on-1 video / audio call with an investor
    • Allow screen sharing to view an investor deck
    • Contact your ICR client manager to set up
  • Forum 360 – click here for overview
    • Resource-light and cost effective – all web-based system and very user friendly
    • Q&A monitoring and easy follow up for any unanswered questions
    • Can be re-purpose as Annual Shareholder Meeting platform but requires separate partnership with a Proxy Management company for voting session
    • Contact: Rowlan Hirst / rhirst@forum.care
  • Intrado
    • Capable of combining live and pre-recorded webcam video / audio
    • Resource-light – all web-based system and very user friendly
    • Q&A monitoring during live event
    • Contact: Megan Pinson & Beck Lewellen / pinson@intrado.com & beck.lewellen@intrado.com
  • Q4 Web System – click here for overview
    • Capable of combining live and pre-recorded webcam video / audio
    • Q&A monitoring during live event
    • Contact: Karen Adams / karena@q4inc.com
  1. Supplemental platform:
  • Say Technologies – click here for overview
    • NOT an alternative to any of the solutions above, but an add-on tool that will greatly supplement the “shareholder outreach” effort prior to any virtual event.
    • Strictly a “Q&A” platform to help facilitate questions from both institutional and retail investors effectively (they have an algorithm that will “group” similar questions together and allow investors to “up-vote” certain topic / questions). The platform is usually available several weeks ahead of the virtual event so shareholders can start submitting their questions.
    • For 2020 Annual Meeting, Say is offering their Q&A platform free of charge given the disruption from COVID-19.
    • Contact: Alex Ermenidis / alex.ermenidis@saytechnologies.com
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