Good line of thought there @DrPete - My experience has been that the larger the company is, and the more successful they have been, the less likely they are to want to talk to individual investors or small groups of investors, however there are exceptions. Sometimes you have dedicated investor relations people who are happy to chat about the company and how they see their own prospects, and to answer questions without notice. One such example is a company I hold called Monadelphous Group (MND). They're not small, but their various investor relations people over the years have always been happy to answer my emails and give specific answers rather than just direct me to their previous ASX disclosures.

A few years ago, I was interested in what level of M&A Mono's (MND) considered to be "material" (worth an ASX announcement) because I had seen on facebook that a small privately-owned mining services company that used rope harnesses instead of scaffolding called "Evo Access" (to provide rope access for things like large tank and vessel repairs or treatments such as welding, sand-blasting, painting, etc.) had been bought by MND. The response I got (the same day) was that they did make various small bolt-on acquisitions now and again that they felt would not move the dial much in terms of their previous guidance and the market's expectations for revenue and profits in the current and following year, so while these acquisitions did have the potential to lead to good growth in future years, there wasn't enough to justify an ASX announcement at the time of purchase, because of the size of the acquisition compared to size of the group (MND).

That small acquisition was the genesis of MND's Rope Access division - see here: https://www.monadelphous.com.au/news/2017/05/monadelphous-rope-access-solutions/

Which does now provide a decent amount of revenue to the group, but it was not deemed worthy of an ASX announcement at the time of purchase, and there are other examples that I won't go into now, but it was good to get their take on why they felt it wasn't worth an announcement at the time of purchase. The sellers who were also the founders of the business (Evo Access) were pretty happy about selling to a large company like MND who wanted to keep all of them on as MND employees to drive that new division for them, and their happy social media posts got my attention at the time and prompted my query to MND investor relations after I noticed a lack of any announcement from MND. I have always been satisifed with the responses that I have received from MND, although I'm sure the higher management (like MD/CEO) wouldn't bother with people like me - that's why they employ investor relations people.

So that's big business. In that case, lack of response or lack of any semblance of detail in a response from a larger company could either suggest that they:

1. Don't consider people at our level important enough to respond properly to, if at all, or
2. They don't have the people or the time to respond to individual enquiries outside of their normal channels (like ASX announcements, Roadshows and Investor Days) and they consider their current disclosures to be entirely adequate; or
3. They have something to hide, or details they would prefer not to share and be made public, which could be due to commercial in-confidence, trade secrets (IP), or because there's something that they think would cause the market to think worse of them and they would rather keep that to themselves.

It's often hard to pick which one of course, it could be an entirely legitmate reason or they could have something they'd rather hide because they've stuffed up somehow or otherwise made one or more poor decisions.

With small companies, those very same things also often apply, however with smaller companies that tend to fly under the radar, you'll often find that most senior management within the company are keen to promote the company and foster a positive image of the company within the market. In other words, they are keen to either front up and answer questions themselves or they are keen to arrange for someone else within the company to do that for them, for the same benefits. Some even believe that all publicity is good publicity, as in: As long as people are discussing us, that's positive. Obviously they would prefer the company is being discussed in a positive light.

In the case of small companies that do not respond to emails, phone calls, and requests for meetings, the most common reasons, in my experience are:

1. They just don't have the time or the personnel to provide that level of investor relations interaction, or
2. They believe their results should do the talking - in other words, they tend to never self-promote, they are more the quiet achiever types, or
3. They have one or more issues (decisions they have made that have turned out badly, or unfortunate situations they have found themselves in) that they are not wanting to confirm or discuss.

There are clearly other reasons, but I find these tend to be the most common. In that light it's very refreshing to find a CEO or MD that is prepared to agree to come onto a platform like Strawman.com and not only do a prepared presentation but to also answer questions without notice, and do so in a relaxed and friendly manner without evading questions they should be able to answer.

In terms of emails and phone calls, I find that phone calls rarely work, but emails often do get answered if you find out who the correct person is to send them to within the company and then send them to that person. Even if you don't get the person right, the email usually gets forwarded to the right person. Phone calls on the other hand often hit a wall, as in, that person isn't here right now, but I'll pass on a message that you called, and you then never hear back from them or anyone else from that company.

But emails will sometimes get ignored for one of those 3 reasons above (the second lot of 3), or in the case of larger companies sometimes the first 3 reasons. And it's always hard to try to guess which of those reasons it was.

Finally, I always enquire from the position of a CIO (chief investment officer), and you can be the CIO of a fund of any size, including your own SMSF. You would not only be the CIO, you could also be the only investment officer (fund manager, analyst, etc.) for that fund, but the CIO term can still apply, particularly in one-sided exchanges like emails where they are less likely to ask you about the fund you manage. I'm not sure if that helps (in terms of achieving an adequate response to emails), but I'm guessing it does.

To answer those last three points of yours.

• Do analysts, fundies or substantial shareholders get more airtime with CEOs?

Yes, they do, because companies usually see them as more valuable and representing larger pools of available investment capital.

• Have you had more success with calls/meetings rather than written communication?

No, I have had more success with emails than with any other sort of communication.

• Ultimately do you find that direct communication with CEOs is useful?

I find direct communication with somebody within the company who can give me the answers I need to be useful, but it does not have to be the CEO. I don't think it matters who it is, as long as you get the answers. However meetings with CEOs such as we get here on SM are valuable because we get to make judgements about the character and competence (and trustworthyness) of the top man/woman at the company, which should give us either comfort or worry (cause for concern), or somewhere in-between. It's not fool-proof by any stretch, but it is still valuable.