Performance of listed companies’ communication and IR programs recognized by global investors

The Romanian Investor Relations Association (ARIR) in collaboration with Institutional Investor – industry leader of independent performance validation and a source of qualitative market intelligence and global benchmarking for Corporate Executive Management Teams, Investor Relations and Investment Professionals – recognized the best performance in Investor Relations (IR), for the second time in Romania during AR&IR Gala. The representatives of Fondul Proprietatea & OMV Petrom garnered the highest votes by institutional investors worldwide.

Johan Meyer, CEO Fondul Proprietatea:

“Over the past 10 years since Franklin Templeton took over the management of Fondul Proprietatea, we have been committed to increasing the visibility and the profile of the Fund, the local capital market and Romania in general to a broader audience of institutional investors. We proudly look back on a decade during which we helped to introduce Romania to numerous foreign investors through regular roadshows, participation in various emerging and frontier market conferences around the globe and meetings with various parties. Moreover, we strongly believe that the Fund’s success will continue to positively reflect on Romania’s attractiveness as an investment destination for both domestic and international investors in the years to come. We are deeply honoured to see that the investment community is recognizing the efforts of our investor relations to communicate Fondul Proprietatea’s message in an open and transparent way. As always, we remain committed to the further development of the Romanian market and will continue to hold and participate in investor-dedicated meetings and events in order to promote Romania as a solid and promising investment destination.”

Alina Popa, CFO OMV Petrom:

“We are honoured that the investment community has acknowledged and appreciated OMV Petrom’s continued commitment to be a transparent, sustainable and attractive proposition for all stakeholders. In this year full of challenges and uncertainties, digital technologies allowed us to remain close to investors. We intensified our efforts to communicate frequently and openly about our strong equity story even in the new market environment, while sustainability themes are a priority on our investor communication agenda. For the future, as we find ourselves on a transformation path in our sector, we remain highly motivated to engage in proactive dialogue with investors on the sustainability of our business performance.”

Marian Năstase, Chairman of the Board of Directors, ALRO:

“Retail investors’ vote represents an act of confidence and honours us. We have always had a long-term relationship with retail investors which was based on trust and honesty and such results represent the confirmation of our approach. Moreover, this recognition comes in a year marked by exceptional conditions generated by the sanitary crisis while the aluminium industry was already facing difficult market conditions; however, despite this unfavourable context, we managed to remain faithful to our strategy, all our segments are fully operational and we operate at normal parameters. Additionally, we managed to make important steps in presenting our approach towards sustainability and we have delivered an outstanding report for 2019. We are happy that our efforts in this direction, as appreciated by an independent team of experts, came off as one of the best Sustainability Reports on the Romanian market. Thus, once more, ALRO proved that it represents tradition, stability and 100% dedication to all our stakeholders and I can assure you it will be the same in the future, too.”

Amani Korayeim, Director, EMEA Sales & Product Development, Institutional Investor:

“This year has been akin to a stress test for most companies, in particular challenging for business leaders who were under much greater scrutiny to demonstrate business resilience and agility. Companies with pro-active Investor Relations functions that provided relevant, up to date and forward looking information as part of their crisis response strategy stood a better chance at earning the trust and confidence of their stakeholders.

IR is critical to how companies are perceived and their valuation and provides a bridge between the investment community and the executive management team. To manage IR effectively and improve your communication you need to measure the quality of your IR deliverables regularly, which is exactly what we aim to do with Institutional Investor’s annual and independent Executive Team survey.”

Daniela Șerban, ARIR President & Co-Founder:

“In a particularly difficult market context, proactive investor dialogue has been essential. We saw very active companies in terms of initiatives to adapt to the new environment, more engagement from the management with the stakeholders. We are proud to contribute to the achievements of the Romanian capital market and to award for the second consecutive year the best professionals and their activity with investors.”

Institutional Investor surveyed buy-side analysts, money managers and sell-side researchers at securities firms and financial institutions that cover the region. Survey results reflect the opinions from 385 investment professionals at 240 financial services firms. Out of the 380 nominated companies and 829 individuals in this year’s survey, 8 Romanian companies and individuals have successfully managed to receive unprompted feedback from the participating investment professionals. The listed companies were carefully analysed and top rankings for Best CEO, Best CFO, Best Company in IR and Best IR Professional are the following:

Individual investors active on the Romanian capital market also voted the company with which they communicated best in the last year through the ARIR website. We encourage investors to rate the transparency of companies, the quality of the reporting and their communication from the perspective of availability and proactivity of the Investor Relations team.

Best Company in IR 2020 – Retail choice: ALRO, Teraplast, Antibiotice

ARIR included for the first time a new category award – “Best Sustainability Report”, considering the growing importance given by investors to non-financial information and the transition to the new status of emerging market that will bring the Romanian capital market in the loop of a new category of investors. Listed companies’ reports were evaluated by an independent jury, based on voluntary submission.

Best sustainability report 2019: OMV Petrom, ALRO, Electrica

The jury consisting of Adina Ardeleanu – Co-Founder Financial Intelligence, Adrian Codîrlașu – Vicepresident CFA Romania, Cristian Petre – Portfolio Manager NN Pensii, Mihaela Stoica – CEO Intercapital Invest and Mugur Popescu – Investment Director BCR Pensii evaluated the reports based on 8 criteria defined together with top specialists from the market.

AR&IR GALA is organized with the support of our strategic partners ALRO (one of the largest vertically integrated aluminum producers in Europe, by production capacity, ARIR Founding member), Banca Transilvania (the largest bank in South-Eastern Europe, ARIR Associate member), Bucharest Stock Exchange (organizes and manages the regulated markets of financial instruments, ARIR Founding member), Electrica (key player in the electricity distribution and supply market in Romania, ARIR Associate member), TeraPlast (parent company of TeraPlast Group, the largest Romanian producer of construction materials, ARIR Founding member).

Main partners of the event are: Antibiotice (one of the most important Romanian manufacturers of generic drugs from the pharmaceutical industry, ARIR Associate member), Transelectrica (Romania’s electricity transmission and system operator that manages, operates, maintains, modernizes and develops the transmission grid, ARIR Associate member), Transgaz (the sole operator of the National gas transmission system, ARIR Associate member).

Institutional Partners: ENVISIA (the First Business School in Romania for Board Directors, ARIR Affiliate Member.

Media partners are: Radio România Actualități,  Money.ro, Financial Intelligence, The Diplomat, JURIDICE.ro, Bizis.ro, Economistul, Club Economic, România Durabilă. Monitoring partners are Klarmedia and Issue Monitoring.

ARIR is a non-governmental and non-profit organization that was set-up to provide current and potential issuers a platform for the development of Investor Relations (IR) professionals and contribute to the implementation of best practices in investor communication and corporate governance. It was established in November 2018 and has as members listed companies, companies with potential to become listed companies, fund managers, IR professionals as well as consultants. The founding members are BVB, ALRO, Electromagnetica, Franklin Templeton Management – Bucharest Branch, Hidroelectrica, Nuclearelectrica, Teraplast, Transelectrica, Daniela Șerban, Cosmin Răduță and Tony Romani, while Electrica, OMV Petrom, Antibiotice, Idea Bank, BRK Financial Group, Banca Transilvania and Transgaz joined as Associate Members and INNOVA Project Consulting, ENVISIA, RTPR and Intercapital as Affiliate Members.