[THREAD] Learnings for @JSE_Group and @ZARX_xchange corporates about the importance of engaging their shareholder base with some insights from @CharlesHSavage @StefMarani .... and a comment changing face of retail share ownership in SA.

Most listed corporates are REALLY bad at engaging their shareholders. They talk to minority shareholders every 6 months at results presentations and many of them aren't actually sure what to do if a shareholder actually arrives at their AGMs.

They also gripe that their shares are trading on single digit PEs, analysts never cover their shares, media never invite them for interviews and fund managers don't want to hear their stories.

This has been a story in financial markets for as long as I have covered the various exchanges - there are something like 800 unit trusts cover the top 40 shares and less than 10 that cover small caps.

The @Decusatio1 team got together and said we wanted to do something about this as our way of putting something back into the markets and we started organising a series of webinars where you can quiz / meet @ZARX_xchange and JSE listed businesses

You can follow @anebresler @justTash @Decusatio1 for details of the webinars as they are announced.

With no real marketing apart from some tweets there were 40 people signed up to the Purple Group webinar and 20 on the Renergen webinar inside of 8 hours.

Smaller listings who have never had to engage their shareholders before are struggling. Their corporate finance teams, their sponsors and IR teams - this is a first for them - "How do we talk to our shareholders about our strategy?"

What have @StefMarani and @CharlesHSavage done well?

Talking to shareholders (big or small) is part of their "corporate" DNA and it shows in their shareprices.

Purple is up 45% in last 3 months which is about R220m increase in market cap. https://www.moneyweb.co.za/tools-and-data/click-a-company/PPE/

Renergen is up 30% in the last 90 days - https://www.moneyweb.co.za/tools-and-data/click-a-company/REN/

That 30% has moved the market capitalisation of the company by over R400m - that is wealth that is created for shareholders.

This is not an endorsement of either business - they both have a lot of work to do to become sustainable and neither is immune to the impact of COVID-19.

What it does highlight is the vast difference in engagement with their retail investors compared to industry peers

This story on how US retail investors drove the share price of Sasol fascinates me: https://www.businesslive.co.za/bt/business-and-economy/2020-06-21-the-secret-of-sasols-stock-surge/

For me one of the big things that @CharlesHSavage and his @EasyEquities team have done is give ordinary investors the ability to own a part of the economy. It's cool to talk about the shares you own and to see so many young people in the discussions is fantastic.

For too long, corporates have under-invested in talking to their shareholders. The bourse is supposed to be a safe bubble / orderly space where a couple of institutional shareholders go through the motions. We can't complain then when the numbers of listings dwindle.