TWO THIRDS OF NASDAQ COMPANIES IGNORE INVESTOR ENQUIRY EMAILS
Released on: September 13, 2007, 7:38 am
Press Release Author: Rainier PR
Industry: International Trade
Press Release Summary: Research unveiled today has revealed that the majority of
leading NASDAQ
and almost half of FTSE 100 companies are neglecting their online
capabilities with limited responses to investor relations email enquiries.
Press Release Body: The alarming results reveal that on average only 38 out of 100
NASDAQ
companies responded to staged emailed investor enquiry with
the appropriate
answers, while just 53 FTSE 100 companies responded within a three week period.
Those companies that did respond had wildly varying results ranging from under three
minutes to more than two weeks, according to Rainier PR, the UK technology public
relations company which carried out the study.
The Alternative Investment Market (AIM), a sub market of the London Stock Exchange
(LSE), recently called for all firms listed on its books to have Rule 26-compliant
websites under new requirements and firms could face penalties if they are found to
be non-compliant. However, at present there are no legal requirements for NASDAQ and
FTSE companies to support miscellaneous information requests.
“These results must come as a wake up call for top companies,” said Steve Earl
co-founder and managing director of Rainier PR. “Email is one of the foremost
research and communications tools for investors, so it is shocking that these
companies - especially in the US - have apparently disregarded the questions of a
potential investor. To not even respond after three weeks is amazing, after all,
email is supposed to be instantaneous. At best it looks like incompetence, at worst
a personal slight.”
Earl added; “Major companies need dedicated resources for answering ‘company’ emails
24 hours a day, with a clear process for satisfying the question or request at a
departmental or geographical level if the central communication team cannot do so
immediately. Web investors deserve better.”
Rainier PR contacted the top 100 NASDAQ and FTSE companies with a standard email
request and noted the response rates using contact details supplied on the
corporations’ websites. Some companies did respond quickly, the fastest coming back
with a reply within three minutes. The figures below show the companies with the
fastest response times in both the FTSE
100 and the NASDAQ top 100.
FTSE
1 – Smiths 3 minutes
2 – BG Group 8 minutes
3 – Royal Dutch Shell 9.5 minutes
4 – Drax 11.5 minutes
5 – Shire Pharmaceuticals 13 minutes
6 – Experian 14 minutes
7 – Kazakhmys 16.5 minutes
8 – Rexam 32 minutes
9 – Rio Tinto 46 minutes
10 – Hammerson 57 minutes
NASDAQ
1 – Patterson Companies 2.5 minutes
2 = Joy Global / Intel 3.5 minutes
4 – Millicom 20 minutes
5 – DENTSPLY 27.5 minutes
6 – Comcast 34.5 minutes
7 – CDW Corporation 35 minutes
8 – Apple Inc 1hr 14 minutes
9 – PetSmart 1hr 18.5 minutes
10 – Tellabs Inc 1hr 31 minutes
However, these fast response times simply serve to place in stark contrast the
majority of NASDAQ companies that failed to respond at all, Earl agreed. Researchers
were particularly surprised that a large proportion of the high profile NASDAQ
technology companies normally renowned for their communications and IT systems were
some of the worst offenders and did not respond at all, these companies included:
SanDisk, Research in Motion (RIM), BroadCom, Symantec, Logitech, Akamai
Technologies, Garmin, Dell, Checkpoint and Google among others.
Even more surprising is that when asked for the name of the CEO and Chairman,
Oracle’s investment relations team responded by saying they do not give out employee
information. In addition the Yahoo! investor relations email address was inactive.
While there are still companies in both Exchanges with no investor email option at
all, these include; GlaxoSmithKline and Morrison’s supermarkets on the FTSE and
Ryanair and Citrix on the NASDAQ.
All companies in the Rainier PR Web-Index™ Study were contacted on 6 August 2007.
Emails were sent at the middle of the UK and US working day for
the FTSE
and Fortune
companies respectively to overcome any time zone factors. Rainier PR acknowledges
that different results may occur on different dates and times.
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