Does the corporate IR team need a blog?
Urs Gattiker at ComMetrics, a Zurich-based firm specialising in benchmarking online marketing campaigns and web sites, writes an interesting post about Dell’s decision to move its IR efforts online, blog-style for all the public to comment on.
The computer maker launched Dell Shares six months ago. Never mind that Dell’s shares have fallen 37 per cent since then. (The bloggers didn’t sink investor enthusiasm). Dell in a few months has managed to…
…create a viable model in corporate transparency with this blog. It
comments on its sustainability efforts, recent acquisitions and it
elaborates on press releases. Like this 31 March post
by Lynn A. Tyson, VP of Investor relations when she writes about the
difficult decision by Dell to close some operations. She writes:
In our release we also announced that we will be closing our desktop
manufacturing in Austin, Texas. Over the last three years, driven by
the massive shift in customer preference for notebooks – especially
among consumers, industry forecasts for the rate of growth of desktops
have declined from 10.8 percent to 3.6 percent. And the desktop to
notebook mix in the U.S. has declined from a 70/30 split in 2005 in
favor of desktops to a 50/50 split today. Our fiscal fourth quarter of
last year reflects this change as we grew notebook units year over year
by 37 percent and desktops by 10 percent.
Naturally, this triggers an exchange that wouldn’t be possible outside of this forum:
It
would seem to me that closing the Austin facility is a little harsh
considering that desktops are at least 50 % of sales. If this is just
an excuse to end American jobs and send them overseas (China) then I
can only say BAD Dell. The last time Dell tried this was with customer
inservice in India. As an IT professional recommending systems to
various customers I can onlly say ths is now a wait and see proposition
as there are lots of chances for quality to fall and Lenovo and others
are waiting in the wings.
@ Ed
As a point of reference – desktops are 32 percent of our revenues not "at least 50%" – down from 34 percent in FY 2007. We
report this number each quarter. From 2004 to 2007, industry growth in
desktops has slowed from 12.6% to 4.6% while notebook growth has risen
from 23.7% to 33.8%.
Welcome to the future of IR.
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