Making the AGM worth turning up to
For ASX-listed companies with a 30 June year end, October and November is AGM season. The Corporations Act requires a public company to hold its AGM within five months of the end of its financial year, so most of the junior resources sector will meet its shareholders in the next few weeks.
For many of those companies, the AGM is treated as a procedural requirement. Resolutions are put, proxies are counted and the meeting closes within half an hour, often with only a handful of shareholders in the room. That’s understandable for a small company with limited resources, but it overlooks what the AGM actually is: the one time each year the board is formally accountable to its shareholders, face to face.
Handled well, it’s one of the most useful investor relations opportunities a company has.
It starts with the notice of meeting
Most votes are decided by proxy well before anyone arrives, which means the notice of meeting is the real conversation with the majority of shareholders. It’s worth treating it that way.
Routine resolutions, such as director re-elections, the remuneration report and ratification of past placements, deserve a clear explanation of why the board is recommending them. Anything less routine, such as a new incentive plan or additional placement capacity, deserves more. Shareholders who don’t understand a resolution are more likely to vote against it or abstain, and a notice written in plain language is one of the easiest ways to avoid an unnecessary strike or a resolution that fails.
It also helps to speak with major shareholders before the meeting, particularly on anything they might have concerns about. A disagreement is much easier to work through in a phone call in October than in the room on the day.
Give people a reason to attend
The chair’s address and managing director’s presentation are a chance to step back from individual announcements and talk about the year as a whole: what the company set out to do, what it achieved, what didn’t go to plan and what comes next. Shareholders appreciate candour, and an honest reflection on the year usually builds more confidence than a highlights reel.
Because the AGM can’t be used to release new material information, the presentation and any written addresses should be lodged with the ASX before the meeting starts. That’s a requirement, but it’s also an opportunity. A well-prepared AGM presentation is often one of the best summaries of a company’s story available to investors, and it can be reused well beyond the meeting itself.
Accessibility matters too. Many junior companies have shareholders spread across the country and overseas, and hybrid formats now allow people who can’t make it to Perth to watch and ask questions. For a small register, that can make a noticeable difference to engagement.
Prepare for the questions
The questions at a junior company’s AGM are usually predictable: the share price, dilution from capital raisings, the cash position, timing of the next milestone and how directors are paid. The board should be ready to answer each of them clearly and consistently, without straying into anything that hasn’t already been disclosed to the market.
We always encourage clients to work through likely questions before the meeting and agree who will answer what. A confident, considered answer to a difficult question does more for a board’s credibility than any slide.
Don’t skip the informal part
Some of the most valuable conversations happen after the formal business has closed. Giving shareholders time to speak with directors and the technical team over a coffee, or holding the meeting somewhere that allows for it, turns a compliance exercise into a genuine chance to build relationships.
Some companies go further, pairing the AGM with a technical briefing, a core display or an investor lunch. These don’t need to be elaborate. The point is to give shareholders who have made the effort to attend something worth their time.
After the meeting
The results of the resolutions need to be released to the ASX straight after the meeting, but the communication shouldn’t end there. A short post summarising the meeting and linking to the presentation lets shareholders who couldn’t attend see what was discussed, and shows that the company values the engagement.
At Discovir, we see the AGM as a once-a-year opportunity for a board to show its shareholders who they’re investing in. With a little more preparation, it can be the meeting people make the effort to attend rather than the one they vote on by proxy and forget.
