Conference clientele consider their choices

THE CONFERENCE CALLER: The resources conference season is well and truly underway but with the number of events scattered across the calendar, how do junior companies decide which forum offers them the best value?

Next week The Roadhouse heads to Sydney to attend the RIU Sydney Resources Round-Up, kicking off a couple of months of air flights, hotels and handshakes, as we keep abreast of what’s happening in the junior resources sector.

The recent proliferation of events in the conference space has now become an issue for companies, especially in the current economic mood where decisions on how and why they spend their cash are more important than ever.

In an open letter to the industry, long-time participant in the resources conference arena, Vertical Events managing director Stewart McDonald acknowledge the recent growth within his industry and that companies were being more selective in which events they attend.

“Times are tough for the junior minerals and oil & gas exploration sector and I know everyone is tightening their belts and questioning the value of attending resources conferences,” McDonald said.

“The bottom line is that there are too many resources conferences and many of them don’t deliver value to the companies that participate in them.”

We contacted a few company executives to canvass their ideas on the matter and received some fairly straight-forward responses, probably due to our willingness for them to remain nameless on this occasion.

“We also noted the proliferation of conferences a number of years ago, and then found some were more well attended than others (read: some were very poorly attended),” one respondent executive said.

“Notwithstanding the reason that some conferences were poorly attended were due to factors such as the cyclic market downturn, commodities being on the nose investor-wise.

“We have found that Stewart and Doug’s [Vertical Events] conferences were the best run and best attended.

“Pro-active Investors’ investor’s sessions – I like these smaller forums a lot – in Perth and Sydney, and will support these going ahead.

“I also attend Diggers and Dealers, although I think it has outgrown the junior explorer, but it is almost compulsory attendance.

“I would like to see a Junior Diggers run in parallel.

“I usually present at the AMEC Conference in Perth – for support, but it is far from the best.”

Our candid correspondent said he liked to see consistency at events, acknowledging the RIU conferences have a history of this.

He said they are usually supported by good companies, have investors in attendance and are well organised.

“RIU also tries to keep down the number of ancillary industry booths and attendee’s,” he said.

“I’m there to see our story promoted and it is a little frustrating being bailed up by pump salesmen and HR people – albeit both are necessary.”

Another executive told The Roadhouse he often found it more effective to conduct one-on-one broker road shows and investor seminars, such as those run by Proactive Investors, Symposium and others.

However, he did mention these events face the same challenge as conferences in that often he just gets to meet with the same old “tired” investors who go from one seminar free lunch or cocktail hour to another.

“The other conferences that we have attended from time to time are AMEC (Perth), Sydney Resources Roundup, Melbourne Resources Roundup and Brisbane Mining,” he said.

 

“We’ve also attended a couple of the Mines & Money conferences in London, Hong Kong and Singapore.

“It would be fair to say that these really depend on the market sentiment at the time as to whether they are successful.

“Sometimes they do not attract any investors or brokers, so we are just talking to ourselves – that is others in the industry – which is a waste of time and money.

“As a company our goal is to meet and talk with new investors, and if a conference can’t attract those people, then we’re not really interested.

“The conference organisers have to work a lot harder in that regard.

“They charge us a lot of money to present and exhibit, and we often don’t get value for money.”

We don’t claim to be overly-scientific at The Roadhouse but a we took a quick straw poll of a few company executives to see which events were ranked in their Top Five must attend events.

Some ranked more than five others ranked less. The chart below shows how each company ranked its preferences from 1 being highest to 5 (one case 7) the lowest.

 

Although our survey was not exactly spread over the entire industry it does indicate where some companies go to be seen and that what they are mining and where they are doing it can have some bearing on the decisions they make.

In his open letter to the sector McDonald claimed Vertical Events had, “pioneered the Mining Resources Convention” and that the company had been doing so, “Long before the ‘resources boom’ made conferences fashionable.”

“When Vertical Events began its business, there were very few resources industry conferences and virtually nothing that focussed on the junior exploration sector,” McDonald said.

“Over the past 14 years, the resources conference market we helped to create has become swollen by events promoted by opportunists riding the wake of the ‘resources boom’.

“These opportunists promise great things, but routinely fail to attract decent audiences and most importantly, fail to provide value for money to sponsors, exhibitors and participants.

“It’s no wonder in these tough times; many people are now questioning the value of attending conferences at all.”

A further respondent to The Roadhouse survey agreed there certainly are a lot of conferences out there and that it would be possible to travel the world simply by attending resource conferences.

This executive heads a junior Australian gold producer with a focus on the Australian retail market, which means he is more domestic in his frequent flyer point accumulation only attending conferences in Australia.

“My top five as far as effectiveness for promotion of our company to our target audience are: Sydney Gold Symposium, Gold Coast Resources Showcase, Brisbane Mining, RIU Melbourne Resources Round-Up, and Diggers & Dealers,” he said.

“At the Sydney Gold Symposium you get a lot of gold bugs, retail investors; it is a very interesting conference if you want to find out about investing in gold.

The Gold Coast Resources Showcase attracts a lot of very astute retail investors, well-funded retirees who are genuinely interested in discussing your business.

“Also, as it takes place before the end of financial year these investors can soak up end of financial year selling.”

Like most of the junior executives who responded to our questions this executive also claimed his company to be too small to get a look in at Diggers & Dealers.

He did however, acknowledge its effectiveness to simply attend as a delegate to maintain industry contacts and source potential acquisitions adding the company became aware of a project another company was divesting, which it subsequently acquired.