I define the "Size of the Investor Communications Delivery
Expense Annually" as the amount of money spent annually to send to
investors compliance materials including but not limited to
prospectuses, annual reports, account statements, trade confirmations,
and other documents on behalf of mutual funds, corporate equities,
brokerage firms, and retirement plans.
By "investors", I mean individuals who have purchased or own stock,
bonds or mutual funds, directly or through a third party.
What I need is an estimate of the size of this expense, including
production of the above materials, processing, and postage, for both
paper and electronic delivery, as well as the sources from which that
estimate is derived.
Thanks. |
Request for Question Clarification by
omnivorous-ga
on
05 Oct 2002 13:16 PDT
Jack --
I've seen reports analyzing how much is spend on investor relations
each year, which usually includes all of the mailing and
communications costs for annual, quarterly, 10K reports -- as well as
the time spent by IR staff to brief analysts and stay in contact with
key investors. But before we go too far in this research, a couple of
questions:
* are you seeking total IR spending by public companies?
* how far would you like to see a breakdown, if it's available?
* are you really seeking "individual," as opposed to "institutional"
investors?
Many individuals obviously own their shares through institutions
(mutual funds, retirement funds) -- but the corporation only
communicates with the shareholder of record.
A breakdown of what is spent to communicate to individuals would
likely only be an approximation based on overall estimates of
ownership what percentage of market shares are in the hands of
individuals, as opposed to investors.
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA
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Clarification of Question by
jack_zeugma-ga
on
05 Oct 2002 21:46 PDT
>Jack --
>
>I've seen reports analyzing how much is spend on investor relations
>each year, which usually includes all of the mailing and
>communications costs for annual, quarterly, 10K reports -- as well as
>the time spent by IR staff to brief analysts and stay in contact with
>key investors.
Such a comprehensive report as your describe above would include the
statistics I'm looking for and more. However, I'm specifically looking
for the amount spent on preparing and delivering compliance documents,
just as you have listed above. The time spent by IR staff to brief
analysts I would consider gravy.
>But before we go too far in this research, a couple of
>questions:
>* are you seeking total IR spending by public companies?
I am looking for total spending by mutual funds on preparing and
delivery statements and confirms, and well as annual and semi-annual
reports to their investors, regardless of whether those investors have
invested directly through the mutual fund, or through broker dealers.
>* how far would you like to see a breakdown, if it's available?
I would like to see a breakdown between the different stages of the
document preparation process. For example, it would nice to know how
much the mutual fund industry (that is, investment companies such as
Janus and Fidelity) spend on preparing compliance documents (such as
say a prospectus), how much then spend on printing those documents,
and how much they spend to mail them.
I do not need that statistic broken down to the company level (though
such a level of detail would be of course helpful and probably worth
forking over some more $$$).
Finding out how much public companies spend on sending IR documents
such as 10-ks, etc. would be useful as well, but not as essential as
finding out how much mutual funds spend on prospectuses.
>* are you really seeking "individual," as opposed to "institutional"
>investors?
My understanding is that generally some institutional buyers of (such
as Fidelity) of public companies (such as IBM) typically receive
10-K's and such reports for free from the public companies, and then
must pay postage and storage for those documents.
If that is the case, I would be happy to know how much the public
companies (such as IBM) pay to print up their documents, and how much
the institutional buyers (such as Fidelity) pay to store and delivery
them.
Also, I believe that pension buyers don't receive any documents at all
due to no-action letter agreements with the SEC.
If any of those assumptions are incorrect however, I would be happy to
receive the relevant statistics (and correct set of facts).
To summarize, I would be nice to fill in a chart as follows:
[Mutual Fund] [Public Companies] [Pensions]
[Retirement Plan Providers]
/document preparation/
/document printing/
/document storage/
/document delivery/
If further clarification is necessary before you are sure that you are
answering the question I am asking, please let me know.
Regards,
Jack
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Clarification of Question by
jack_zeugma-ga
on
06 Oct 2002 22:56 PDT
Omnivorous-
I have never seen accurate statistics on this either. Hence, the
question. :)
I've upped the price to $50 in hopes that that will drive demand.
In addition, I'll set up a seperate question regarding just the IR
info for public companies for $10, if it's still worth you're time.
Regards,
Jack
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