Companies embrace virtual annual shareholder meetings
MINNEAPOLIS — Two years ago, SurModics Inc. conducted its annual meeting and only four shareholders showed up.
Even though it was held at the company’s suburban Twin Cities headquarters, there was not a big return for the expense.
So last year, the company conducted a virtual annual meeting — something more companies are electing to do. SurModic’s board chairwoman, Susan Knight, said during this year’s meeting in February that the company now expects to follow suit every year.
“Quite frankly, it’s a more of a social gathering than anything else,” said Andy LaFrence, chief financial officer and vice president of finance for SurModics.
More than 90 percent of SurModics shareholders are institutions, he said.
“The majority of them are going to be on the coasts,” LaFrence said. “This gives those shareholders an opportunity to participate and to vote live with the tools in place.” SurModics also offers other ways for shareholder engagement, he added.
SurModics’ annual meeting was hosted by Broadridge Financial, a Long Island, N.Y., company that provides investor communication and other services to corporate clients.
The technology for virtual annual meetings is not much different from what is used for webcasts of a company’s quarterly investor conference call. Broadridge provides the client two specific web addresses — one to broadcast the meeting and another to cast votes.
Cathy Conlon, vice president of corporate issuer product and strategy at Broadridge Financial, sees virtual annual meetings as a trend.
“This is technology that has become accepted,” Conlon said.
Broadridge’s first virtual annual meeting was for Intel Corp. in 2009, when the Santa Clara, Calif.-based technology company had both a physical meeting with an option to participate virtually. Last year, Intel went fully virtual.
Broadridge thought the virtual meeting product would appeal mainly to tech companies, but quickly realized that companies in a broad range of industries have started leaning toward the option. In 2016, Broadridge helped 154 companies conduct virtual annual meetings, an increase of 71 percent from the year before. Broadridge played host to 32 more hybrid models such as Intel’s 2009 meeting.