Since its IPO, Industrial Bank (IB) has always been recognized by the capital market with its distinctive differentiated business features, market-oriented operation style, steadily advanced strategic transformation and continuously improved risk control capacity. In confrontation with the complicated and changing economic and financial situation both at home and abroad now, IB has made active responses and flexible adjustment by sizing up the situation, built new highs in profits, and kept stable quality. The return on equity (ROE) of the bank has kept a leading position among the listed banks for years.
As the first Equator bank in China, IB has proposed the way to perform corporate social responsibilities through “obtaining reasonable profits while bringing benefits to the stakeholders”, devoting itself to incorporating the responsibility concept into all links of the banking operation step by step. For investor relationship (“IR”) in particular, it follows the concept of “expedite communication and accurate transmission”. In order to further implement the responsibility concept, the bank has launched a variety of activities with distinctive themes to communicate with investors to enhance interaction and exchange, transmit and showcase its core growth value in an active manner, and build a good image in the capital market.
Establishing the institutions first and organizing the implementation to ensure the orderly proceeding of works
A well-established and normative institutional system is the premise and guarantee for the day-to-day handling of IR. Before its IPO, IB had established a relatively normative basic system preliminarily. After its IPO, the bank further such basic regulations as the Investor Relationship Management System, Information Disclosure System, Internal Information Collection System, and the Measures for Management of Insiders, so as to guarantee the quality, standardization and efficiency for the information communication between the bank and investors. Meanwhile, it also established and improved relevant support working regulations including the Investor Relationship Manual, the Approval Process for Reception of Investors and Media, and emergency response plans for major contingencies concerning investors, thus enhancing the capacity to provide services to investors.
The board of directors and senior management team of IB both attached great importance to the construction of the IR team. With the promotion and participation of the senior management team, the bank has gradually established an IR team of high competence and efficiency, broad coverage and extensive participation. The leading team of the company attended all performance meetings and large investor meetings, having straight-out communication with investors face to face and answering their questions in a practical manner. Their judgments and expectations for the trend of business development and improvement of management capacity in communications with investors were all fulfilled at a later time. Hence, they fully won the trust of investors.
Laying store by public opinions and treating them in a rational manner to protect legitimate rights and benefits of investors
Against the backdrop of increasingly complicated economic environment and tightening financial regulation, uncertain factors which may influence the stable operation of China 's capital market, banks are facing a circumstance of extremely complicated public opinions. For this reason, IB established the work leading group for IR emergency and stability maintenance, consisting of the board chairman (as director), president and board secretary (as deputy director) as well as other members from important departments of the bank. The group is responsible for directing the entire bank to monitor and respond to public opinions, and establishing and completing the public opinions management regulations.
IB pays sustained attention to relevant reports on newspapers and internet media, carefully treat and timely respond to the issues concerned by media, makes in-depth analysis over the possible influence to the bank, and clarify the ill-natured and inauthentic reports in a timely manner, so as to create a good public opinion environment. With frequent and fruitful monitoring over public opinions, the group reports the monitoring result to the management team, thus forming close interaction between the management team and external market. In this way, the bank can discover any occurred major event at the earliest possible time, disclose accurate information to investors and prevent them from being misled by the public opinions so as to protect the interests of investors.
Organizing diversified activities with distinctive themes and adhering to the principle of “inviting inside” and “going outside”
IB actively invited investors to come and held the report and performance meeting four times a year regularly, and organized reverse roadshow covering all major business sectors or pertinent investor symposia, helping them to further their understanding to the bank's development model and business features. Meanwhile, it earnestly treated the visits and consultation by telephone or letter of various investors, assigned employees to read and give feedback to the letters of investors at any time and post relevant information for public disclosure so as to ensure the smooth and effective day-to-day communication with investors.
The IR team went outside on its own initiative, giving priority to the one-to-one roadshow to shareholders or investment institutions paying long-term attention to IB, visiting important institutions in such cities as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, and identifying potential investors. And it communicated with institutional investors in a concentrated manner to improve the communication efficiency by means of the capital market meeting platforms organized by the mainstream brokerages both at home and abroad. In particular, at the meetings held by overseas investment banks, the team had face-to-face contact with many QFIIs, building a solid foundation for further understanding and subsequent communication, and in this way, IB became one of the A-share listed companies with the greatest number of shares held by QFIIs.
In addition, IB also made full use of internet to improve the coverage, pertinence, timeliness and convenience of communication with investors in an effective way. For instance, an on-site meeting was supported by real-time sharing via internet and voice access via telephone so that overseas investors could attend the meeting conveniently in other places.
Over the five years after its IPO, IB has, in total, held 30 large performance meetings, 15 reverse roadshows, over 150 telephone conferences, paid more 120 visits to investors, participated in more than 100 capital market meetings, gave replies to over 2,700 emails, answered over 5,500 calls from investors, delivered over 1,500 copies of materials, catered over 900 personal investors and representatives from more than 180 brokerages and investment institutions both at home and abroad, and communicated with over 350 analysts both from home and abroad in various forms. More than 80 analysts have kept long track of IB, and there are over 200 analysis reports on the bank released a year.
Attaching great importance to dividends, emphasizing social responsibilities, and improving the levels of returns to shareholders and the society steadily
IB has always set store by the reasonable investment returns to investors while guaranteeing the sustainable development of the bank. It has defined a sustainable, stable and scientific dividends policy. According to the annual reports released by the bank since its IPO, the total cash dividends (including tax) of IB from 2006 to 2011 reached RMB 14.397 billion, accounting for 43% of the accumulative financing volume.
In this year, IB further specified the Annual Profit Distribution Planning 2012-2014, prescribing that, in the coming three years, the profits distributed in cash each year cannot be less than 20% of the annual distributable profits provided that the capital sufficiency meet the regulatory requirements. In this way, the level of returns to shareholders can be increased. In the coming years, IB will, according to the profits earned and capital sufficiency, steadily increase the proportion of dividends based on the rate of dividends of 20% and keep it at a reasonable level with a view to encourage and guide value investment.
What is more noteworthy, IB took the lead in releasing the sustainable development report among domestic banks and actively promoted the philosophy of sustainable development, building a responsible corporate citizen image. In 2011, the social contribution per share of IB hit RMB 9.80, up by 69.04% YoY, and it ranked No.1 among the 16 A -share listed banks in terms of absolute value and increase.
With its endeavors, IB has won the recognition of investors and market players, and it has won a number of prizes and honors awarded by exchanges, professional research institutions, the four major securities newspapers and mainstream financial media, such as the “Best Investor Relation Communication Prize”, the “Best Wealth Creation IR Award of Chinese Capital Market”, “No.1 of the Listed Companies with the Best Sustained Investment Value”, the “Most Favorite Public Listed Company among Investors in China's Securities Market over the Last 20 Years”, and “Listed Company with the Best Public Image”.