ALC - Q4

This week Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of Blackrock, released his much anticipated annual letter to CEOs about the power of capitalism. The focus of the 2022 letter was aligned with prior years, specifically in relation to ESG, while also expanding on a brand of capitalism that may be viewed by some readers as “woke”.  Rest assured, though, Larry Fink’s stakeholder capitalism is not “woke,” and once again this year, he calls it as he sees it.   

Welcome back to our first trending earnings recap, January 2022 on trending topics, macro trends and key management commentary highlighted from earnings call transcripts of S&P 500 companies for the Q4’21 earnings season. As earnings kicked off last week with three of the “Big Four” banks in the U.S., here are four trending topics that emerged during earnings updates from the week of January 10th, 2022:

The time has come not only to reflect on the last year but begin planning your investor relations program for the coming year. Mike Coffey, VP and Head of Global Partnerships & Alliances, sat down with a few industry leaders to discuss the dos and don’ts of investor relations programming. This includes quarterly earnings calls, what investors and analysts look for in a business and a management team, and their predictions for the future of investor relations technology.

Earlier in the year, Q4 launched our Capital Markets Event (CME) platform. So today, we’re excited to announce new investor conference features. These improvements include sophisticated event registration, easy scheduling for meetings of all sizes, and meeting management data and analytics. As a result, these tools assist corporate access teams in successfully envisioning, planning, and executing investor conferences, thematic events, and reverse roadshows. 

Today’s IPO is an incredible milestone for Q4 and goes public as “QFOR” on TSX, which gives us the opportunity to continue driving our growth and expansion for years to come.

It is that time of the quarter when all the 13F filings have been made public, giving us a view of what happened over Q2. It is important for any IRO to review these 13F filings to understand the changing dynamics of your shareholder base and identify your top investors. However, 13F filings also provide a good indication of what activists are thinking and where they are focused. A new initiation through these filings could be an immediate red flag for management teams and a precursor to a potential activist campaign down the road. Also, many people look to some of these well-known activist investors for new ideas and predictions about where the economy and markets are heading. In this article, we take a look at some of the most widely known activists, including Pershing Square Capital Management, Third Point, and Greenlight Capital to examine their activities in the second quarter. 

The importance of social and sustainability criteria for public companies has been steadily increasing as investors become focused on non-financial performance in their investment decision-making. For investors like Blackrock, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives are seen as critical contributors to a company’s future financial performance and their incorporation into portfolios. And with 72% of investors surveyed by EY sharing that they conduct a structured, methodical evaluation of a company’s ESG criteria, IROs have been looking to better elevate and communicate their investments into sustainability. 

The headline story of 2021 has been the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and the reopening of the world economy after an unprecedented shutdown last year. For the first half of the year, everything seemed to be rolling smoothly with equity markets at all-time highs, the Federal Reserve keeping accommodative monetary policy, and expectations for strong economic growth on the horizon. In fact, earlier in May, we released an article discussing how many people, including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, were describing the current economic state as a “Goldilocks Economy” – a period of fast and sustained growth accompanied by gradually rising inflation and interest rates. Some aspects of this story have played out as investors expect.

The ability to effectively communicate with all employees, regardless of location, is essential to the overall success of any company. Maintaining a high level of contact and engagement presented a real challenge for companies around the world last year, as the pandemic forced employees to work remotely. Driving connections and ensuring timely dissemination of information across a dispersed workforce required an entirely new strategy for many.

While the road to becoming a public company may appear to have long been standardized, new paths and new types of public companies are changing the landscape. Recent Direct Public Offerings (DPOs) have demonstrated that there are viable options for tapping directly into public markets – though these companies are often well-known and well-funded prior to going public.