Earlier this week, EA held it’s quarterly call for investors, where they recap the previous quarter’s results and share their short- and long-term outlook for the future.
These calls tend to be packed with juicy details on release dates, new IP, and what platforms the developers are focusing on for the future. They are also booorrrrinng. You’ll likely never hear a developer come onto an investor call. Sadly, that’s not the type of background investors are interested in. They’re usually led by an investor relations director, with short presentations from the CEO, CFO and a few others. Occasionally they take questions at the end, but even those are limited to investors, analysts, and press.
Just take a look at this doozy from this week’s EA call ” …starting with its fiscal 2009 results, the company began to apply a fixed, long-term projected tax rate of 28% to determine its non-GAAP results. Prior to fiscal 2009, the company’s non-GAAP financial results were determined by excluding the specific income tax effects associated with the non-GAAP items and the impact of certain one-time income tax adjustments.” Sexy!!!
But there is hope. Rather than dialing in, I followed along with some of my favorite games journos, who were kind enough to Twitter throughout the entire call, hitting up the highlights in real time. N’gai Croal, Leigh Alexander, Libe Goad and Stephen Totilo all added context and some much needed character to the preceedings. While I can’t imagine legal and IR departments ever warming up to the idea, it’d be neat to see a company incorporate a side-by-side Twitter conversation into earnings calls in some official way.
I like your idea and I’m glad you mentioned it. I’m an investor relations communications consultant and I advise companies on how to use technology to attract, inform and engage people.
Your idea is similar to what CNN and Facebook did around the Presidential Inauguration, only in that case it was a much bigger audience.
You’re right, I think, that investor relations and corporate legal departments won’t rush to show a Twitter stream alongside their earnings calls, but a few companies would be brave enough to try.
Currently, eBay tweets its own investor calls, but they don’t integrate the webcast and Twitter.
Thanks for writing about this because anything that can get more people interested in those b-o-r-i-n-g calls is worthwhile to me. Investor relations doesn’t have to be the domain on Wall Street only.