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| | Why is ExhibitorResearch.com an essential tool for conference delegates?
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| | Why is ExhibitorResearch.com an essential tool for conference delegates?
ExhibitorResearch.com is designed to help investors get much more out of resource and energy conferences than is possible by just showing up as a delegate. The problem with a typical conference is an overabundance of workshops, talks and exhibitors all squeezed into a few days. So much to do and see, and so little time for it. How can a delegate make the conference experience super-productive?
Some delegates ignore the company exhibits and just participate in workshops and listen to the speakers who usually consist of brokerage analysts, newsletter writers, and fund managers. These delegates are looking for third party recommendations. But in most cases these are second-hand recommendations the speaker has already made to his or her non-conference audience. That is just plain common sense.
Why would a fund manager tell a broad conference audience he likes a particular stock that he still plans to buy for his fund? Why would a newsletter writer blurt out a great idea to the world before telling his paying subscribers? Why would a research analyst tip a stock his employer's clients have not already had a chance to buy?
Although the specific stock picks offered by speakers may be lame or stale, the real value of the speaker's talk lies in his or her reasoning about where the market is headed, what sectors may benefit or be hurt, and what sorts of stocks the speaker is seeking. While the speaker's specific recommendations may still be perfectly valid in terms of price and timing, they are best viewed as examples of what the speaker likes. A shrewd delegate takes conceptual guidance from the speakers, and hits the exhibit floor in search of specific examples. But with hundreds of companies exhibiting at the conference, where does the delegate begin, knowing full well that only a fraction of the exhibiting companies can be checked out?
If you already know which companies interest you, such as the ones in which you are already a shareholder or are watching, you just check the program for the booth number and go directly to them.
Why bother visiting an exhibitor?
Some delegates like to meet management or the investor relations person face to face. They may have already heard the story on the phone, but want to see the story told in person. A delegate can learn a lot about a company by simply observing how well the person at the booth presents the story.
A delegate may also visit a booth in order to obtain a better understanding of the story. Most exhibitors at a "mining" conference do not have a mine. They have exploration projects which they hope will reveal an orebody that eventually gets turned into a mine. Such companies are speculative in the sense that they do not yet have an intrinsic value, though their company does have a market value defined by the stock price and the shares outstanding.
If the company is successful in demonstrating that its project has real value, the stock price may increase substantially and the company's market value will shift from representing speculative value to representing investment value. On the other hand, if the project produces disappointing results, the stock price may go down unless the company has come up with a new promising project.
What does the exhibitor hope to accomplish and why might it succeed?
A shrewd speculator in exploration juniors wants to understand what the company hopes to achieve through a project, what the resulting impact might be on the stock price, what geological evidence supports management's expectations, and what "secondary" project is waiting in the wings in case the "flagship" project does not pan out.
A speculator can learn all this by reviewing a well-designed web site and reading the company's news releases and technical reports. But these come loaded with geological jargon that describes "just the facts" and avoid "forward-looking" statements that spell out what the company hopes to accomplish.
If all those fancy diagrams and accompanying text leave you bewildered, it probably is not your fault. And given the regulatory limits on what a company may say in print, it probably is not the company's fault either. Getting the public to understand the project's potential is a big communications problem and a key reason companies exhibit at conferences.
Conference: a place where management can connect the dots for delegates
Exhibiting at a conference with a booth loaded with maps, pictures and handouts does not alone solve the problem. What is needed to solve this communication problem is an interactive discussion between management and the investor in the presence of the relevant maps and diagrams. The interaction between delegates and exhibitors is what the conference is all about. The key to satisfaction is the quality of this interaction. How well does the exhibitor connect the dots for the delegate?
The model for a quality delegate-exhibitor interaction takes place all the time outside the conference setting. A company will give analysts, newsletter writers and fund managers private presentations during which many questions are asked. The analyst can persist with questions until he or she fully understands the project. A corporate executive may be reluctant to volunteer "forward-looking" comments, but will usually respond to questions that force him or her to map out expectations.
Management engages in such interactive "exploration" of the project because analysts, newsletter writers and fund managers are seen as gateways to much bigger audiences. Time and logistics prevent such interactive presentations from being available to average investors on demand. The only exception is the conference.
A typical resource junior exhibit booth will have on display maps and geological diagrams relating to the flagship project. Sometimes core or rock samples from the zone are on hand. Some companies have a computer terminal on which a Powerpoint presentation can be displayed. Usually hidden under the booth table are additional maps and a hardcopy presentation the company representative can haul out to show delegates looking for a detailed presentation. This is pretty much what the analyst gets to see in the private presentation at the corporate office.
The tangibility of the exhibitor-delegate interaction fosters comprehension
The important thing conference delegates should understand is that every exhibit at a conference represents an opportunity to receive an in-person, interactive explanation of the company's hopes and dreams. Because you are there in person, the exhibitor can verbally wave his or her arms about the project's potential, and you can force the exhibitor to link those expectations back to the geological fundamentals depicted in the company's presentation materials. Dumb as it may sound, being able to point at stuff on the poster is hugely helpful to "getting" the story. Because of the informal nature of the exhibit setting, delegates can even get simple geology lessons from the exhibitors. By the time you are finished "kicking the tires" you should have a good idea what the company is trying to accomplish, how and why it may succeed, and how much money shareholders might make as a result.
When is a booth session not a waste of time?
An interactive booth-based discussion may last 15-20 minutes and will leave you in a strong position to make your own investment decision. That time is well-spent when the delegate already owns the stock and has to make a decision to sell, hold or buy more.
But what if you do not already own the stock, what if you are looking for good buying ideas? If you walk away with a negative impression after a 15 minute interactive session with the exhibitor, all you have learned is that this one out a couple hundred companies is a dud in terms of your objectives and assessment.
So you move on, knocking off 3-4 companies per hour. Perhaps you get 10 done throughout the day. What guarantee do you have that any will be buys? Half way through you will start to get fatigued. Your sharpness in grasping the story and checking to see if it makes sense dulls. Or you may start thinking this is a big waste of time. You start telling yourself to stop being so picky, you'll end up empty-handed. Before you know it you have switched from being a prudent buyer to being a desperate shopper begging to be sold to. A recipe for disaster just like last minute Christmas shopping! Or you give up and just do what the speakers and stock pick panelists are recommending, their picks from yesterday. It doesn't have to be this way.
The professionals do not randomly do detailed research, why should you?
Analysts and newsletter writers do not spend their waking hours enduring personal interactive presentations in the hope that one of them will turn out to be worthy of a buy recommendation. They spend much more time on advance research designed to weed out those stories with a low probability of being worthy of a recommendation. By the time an analyst commits to a presentation he or she is already half-sold on the company. When the presentation starts the story hook or context is already in the analyst's head. The interactive session fleshes out the story and provides the analyst with an opportunity to probe the soundness of the story. The outcome may still be negative, but not nearly as often as would be the case if each session were a random encounter. An analyst or newsletter writer who spends too much time identifying duds will end up out of a job or out of business.
Smart delegates show up with a short list of tire kicking candidates
A shrewd delegate will research the exhibitors in advance of a conference. The delegate will show up with a short list of a dozen or so companies which already meet his or her investment criteria. Like the analyst the delegate will already have a rough idea about the junior's story. The goal is to get the story fully explained by a company representative and try to poke holes in it. It's the scientific process in action. Find a good hypothesis and kick the hell out of it. If it survives you have a winner.
Where does that short list come from?
Good strategy, but how practical is it to execute for somebody who is not a full time analyst? A typical conference registration web site will provide a list of exhibitors for an upcoming conference, and sometimes the exhibitor names will be linked to the company's web site. But that still requires the delegate to visit each web site and sift through material that may be outdated or poorly organized. What is the company's flagship project? What exploration stage is it at? How is the market presently pricing the project? At least an hour of research is required to generate this information from scratch. And that is before any effort is put into figuring out management's expectations and deciding whether or not they are plausible.
A conference delegate should not have to worry about assembling basic facts about exhibitors. What a conference delegate needs to do is filter the facts for that combination which he or she believe identify a winner, and then drill down into the details of the companies that meet the delegate's investment criteria.
At ExhibitorResearch the fact-gathering is already done
ExhibitorResearch.com provides all the basic facts about exhibitors at a conference, and a multi-parameter search engine which allows users to filter the facts. When a search is submitted the web site will display a list of all companies which meet the criteria. The search display will also include company project information so that the user can at a glance see where the projects are located, what exploration stage they are at, what the target metals are, and even the relevant deposit models. The search display includes a link to a company profile that includes contact information and a chart.
All you supply is the search criteria
The general idea is that delegates will use ExhibitorResearch to generate short lists of companies which they can investigate in greater detail by clicking on the profile and then visiting the company's web site. The search criteria can be oriented toward finding certain kinds of companies or certain kinds of projects.
For example, a delegate might be interested only in low priced companies with a small number of shares issued. Or the delegate might be interested in a geographical region such as Canada, or even a local region such as the Cortez Trend. Is there any company at the conference with a Cortez Trend project? Perhaps the delegate wants to focus on silver projects. Maybe only those at an advanced exploration stage. Or those which have a low implied project value (the price a major would be assigning to 100% of the project if it bought out the entire junior to acquire its net interest in the project). Perhaps only those companies which meet all of these criteria? There may not be any, in which case the delegate can broaden the criteria and repeat the search until a hit is delivered.
Do your research at ExhibitorResearch before the conference
A shrewd delegate would spend some time on ExhibitorResearch.com during the week before a conference applying various search criteria combinations. Profiles would be printed for those companies that catch the delegate's interest. At the actual conference the delegate goes with profile printouts in hand directly to those booths and kicks the tires. Since the delegate has already done advance research on these exhibitors, the chances are high that at least several exhibitors on the delegate's short list will emerge with flying colors.
Get searches done at the ExhibitorResearch kiosk during the conference
A delegate may be shrewd, but that does not necessarily mean he or she knows what sort of junior one should be looking for at this point in time. Many of the workshops and speeches during the conference provide excellent insights about market trends. One speaker may be very keen about an emerging area play. Another might make a strong case about uranium. How does one find the exhibitors with uranium projects while walking the conference floor?
ExhibitorResearch.com will have kiosks at participating conferences where delegates can submit a search request and obtain a printout listing all exhibitors meeting the search criteria. Conferences are an excellent setting to overhear buzz about new trends or plays. Through the ExhibitorResearch kiosks the delegate can generate exhibitor short lists on the fly.
Follow up conference tidbits online at ExhibitorResearch after the conference
No delegate conference experience will consist exclusively of intense interactions with exhibitors. A lot of time is spent browsing through the aisles, listening in on conversations, watching corporate presentations, and picking up corporate brochures. What happens to this incidental information a delegate may absorb in passing? Most of the time it just fades away and that bag full of literature ends up in the recycling bin or in a pile on a desk crying "please read me, you picked me up for a reason". ExhibitorResearch will feature conference exhibitors for at least four weeks after the conference. Brochures by nature are dated, which is why it is so hard to look at them when the conference is over. But if all the brochure needs to accomplish is to remind a delegate that the company caught his attention, and with a few keystrokes the profile on ExhibitorResearch with a current stock chart gets displayed, that pile of paper will have well served its purpose.
Use ExhibitorResearch even if you can't make it to the conference
Obviously one does not need to be a conference delegate to benefit from ExhibitorResearch. The fact that a company is going to the trouble and expense to exhibit at a conference is a sign that management has a project on the go and is serious about promoting it. An investor who cannot physically attend a conference will not get the nitty gritty of a booth interaction, but he can still use the ExhibitorResearch engine to identify candidates for online and telephone research.
ExhibitorResearch is an independent service which contracts with conference organizations to provide information about resource and energy related exhibitors at those organizations. |
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