Today I am continuing two themes from recent posts: I am continuing to visit and comment on investor relations sites of FTSE 100 companies, especially their main IR page, and I continue easing back into the workaday world following my recent bicycle trip by visiting the site of another leisure company, Diageo. During long, hot bicycle rides one becomes very focused on “hydration therapy”, particularly if alcoholic content is involved. And Diageo, in its Guinness brand, produces a product that not only hydrates you, but also supplies enough calories to fuel you for the next 20 miles.
I was actually quite pleased with the Diageo main investor relations page. The design of the page was simple and allowed you to find what you were looking for without a great deal of hunting. The links on the left took you to where you expected to go, the center of the page highlighted the most important links and the stock price was clearly featured on the right hand of the page. The only thing I might add to the main page is a mini stock chart which would give the investor a quick snapshot of the stock price movement over a period longer than the current trading day.
When I browsed around the pages linked to the main page, I was able to find pretty much what I was looking for with a minimum of fuss. The design was spare, with no pictures or logos (as compared with the Cadbury site), but the information you need was there. Overall, a very efficient site.
As a sort of investor relations critic-at-large, it kills me not to find any glaring fault I can focus on, but I have to admit, the investor relations information on this site is well done, even including transcripts from some of their presentations. Except for one thing… as an American, I’m basically monolingual, and I can’t figure out how to pronounce Diageo. Do you think they could change their name?
John recently retired as a Lecturer in Management at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Management, where he taught investor relations. Prior to that, John was in charge of investor relations for Sysco Corporation and Walgreen Co. He holds a MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a law degree from Loyola University of Chicago.
You can learn more about John’s thinking about investor relations at his blog, Investor Relations Musings.