A story that sells - Constructing the corporate equity story. A study evaluating the contents of listed companies’ equity stories.
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2022
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Global Management
Language
en
Pages
84 + 2
Series
Abstract
The objective of this thesis was to find out how corporate equity stories are used in voluntary investor relations communication. The equity story is the corporate strategic story for the financial community and its task is to present a company as attractive as possible to investors and other stakeholders. More specifically, this research focused on how the corporate equity story is constructed and how it is utilized by listed companies in building a capital market reputation. The research was carried out as a qualitative content analysis. The data was gathered from the equity stories published on 21 Finnish listed companies’ websites. All the analyzed companies belong to the OMX Helsinki 25 index. The equity stories were analyzed for their availability, structure, contents, and time orientation. Four key findings were discovered in the study. First, most of the equity story content is strategy-related and sustainability topics are closely connected to strategic content. Second, most of the equity story contents focus on non-financial information, and the share of financial information is noticeably smaller. Third, the equity story is clearly positioned as a reputation-building tool due to the choice of words and topics in the equity stories. Lastly, the quality and length of the equity stories vary to a great extent and there does not seem to be a standardized format or a framework for the corporate equity story. These findings indicate that although the equity stories shared a similar structure and contents, each equity story was also constructed individually, and made fit for the specific company. Different areas were emphasized across the analyzed equity stories. As extensive earlier research on voluntary IR communication has not been conducted, this study paves the way for further research in the field.Description
Thesis advisor
Kankaanranta, AnneKeywords
investor relations, voluntary disclosure, investor communication, equity story, reputation