I wrote this to IR (US and SE) and Fredrik. I think it's good if others also react strongly on yesterday's incident.
Hi,
I am sorry to say but I can't explain how irritated I am about the company's communication and IR work. This is the second time the company fails to deliver the promised dividend plan. And as you know, this is far from the only broken promise from the company during recent years.
This is nothing but a scandalous behavior, and for me personally I lost yet another bit of trust in the company as a result of yesterday's debacle.
As the IR functions for the company, you must understand that this can not go on. I know that you formally are not responsible for this lack of information and broken promises, but as I see it you cannot just rest back and ask shareholders to vent their frustration on the CCs. For one thing, the CCs often don't work technically, secondly CC's are only being held quarterly. But perhaps most importantly for you is that you end up looking very unprofessional when the IR function fails like this.
The damage has already been done and investor confidence has been hurt, this cannot be rectified. Shareholders have been expecting a dividend policy, because that is what the company has communicated. However, you can mitigate the damage by quickly sending out a PR where the company sheds light on the situation. Because things go wrong sometimes, that is OK, but the worst thing you can do in those situations is to keep silent and shut down communication. That is not how you build trust in the investor community, and trust is what this company is in desperate need for. This is a very serious problem and I can't beleive that the history keeps repeating itself in this unacceptable manner.
Therefore I urge you to quickly send out an information to the market, to let us know what we can expect. Becuase else the market expects the worst. I expect a communication to be sent out today.
I have also put Fredrik Danielsson as CC in this letter, since I perceive him to be a protector of shareholder value and a guarantor for a changed behavioiur when it comes to delivering on set promises. However, so far I am dissapointed that neither the "European formatted financial report" nor the dividend policy have been delivered.
Best regards,
