Compagnie des Alpes: Recognising shareholders

Online investor relations content is geared to make individual shareholders feel valued.

The Site

Compagnie des Alpes, an operator of ski areas and leisure parks in France and northern Europe, trades its shares on the Paris Bourse and has separate main sections on its website for Financial Communications (Communication financière) and Shareholders’ Space (Espace des actionnaires). The first is primarily for institutional investors and analysts, the second for private shareholders.

Shareholders Space includes information about the Shareholders club, formed in September 2005 to keep individual shareholders up to date with company news and special events, and the offers at company resorts and parks available to anyone holding 100 or more shares. An online club application form is provided. There is also practical information about AGMs and general meetings and a downloadable shareholders’ guide and share order and transfer forms.

The Takeaway

Individual shareholders are often invisible in online investors areas, from which they can easily infer they are also off the company radar. Compagnie des Alpes conveys entirely the opposite impression, with the prominence and content of its Shareholders’ Space reflecting the declared importance it attaches to building “a close relationship built on trust”. One of the paybacks is spelt out in the introduction to the Shareholders club: the philosophy has led to “a higher number of registered shareholders”. They are also likely to be more enthusiastic informal ambassadors.

From information elsewhere on the site it’s possible to estimate that 1.7 million of the company’s 6.3 million shares are held by about 4,800 shareholders. Clearly, Compagnie des Alpes has seen the significance of those numbers and geared its online investor relations content accordingly.

First published on 27 July, 2006