It's time to open the call

There's a conversation happening in the market that almost no one is comfortable with, yet it keeps happening anyway.

In the weeks before a company enters its silent period, a few selected analysts and IR get on a call, often called pre-silent-call. They ask how the quarter is shaping up. IR, doing its job, answers questions. None of that is a problem on its own. IR exists to be reached. Part of an analyst's job is to ask. The problem is who's in the room – and more to the point, who isn't.

Because when a handful of analysts get a read on the quarter that the rest of the market doesn't have, the playing field tilts. And we've all watched how that story unfolds: an unexplained share move, later traced back to a pre-silent-call. It has happened often enough that the Swedish press gave it a name, analytikermassage.

I don't think this problem is about bad actors. IR teams are not trying to leak. Analysts are doing the job they're paid to do: know more than the analyst next door, and be the first call a client makes. That incentive is legitimate when everyone works from the same public information. It turns gray when the information depends on who got invited.

The friction is structural: a useful, legitimate conversation is happening behind closed doors, and that is the entire problem. Take selective disclosure off the table and the call goes back to being what it should be – management teams and IR answering questions, in the open, for everyone at once.

So here is our position, and we'll say it plainly: the pre-silent-calls should be open.

Every shareholder, analyst, and retail investor should have access to meaningful information the same moment the words are spoken. That is the only version of this conversation where no one has to worry about what they shared, what they received, or what someone else knew that they didn't.

This is not an experiment. SEB, Swedbank, Volvo Cars, Borregaard, Danske Bank, and Wärtsilä already host open calls. This is simply investor relations done right.

We want to take that from a handful of companies to a market standard. Quartr reaches millions of market participants with our live earnings calls streaming built into the world’s largest research and trading platforms: ChatGPT for Financial Services, Perplexity, Yahoo Finance, TradingView, Nordnet, and Nordea are only a few examples. Beyond our API distribution through third parties, Quartr Pro serves hundreds of buy-side and sell-side firms across the US, Europe, and Asia, and our free mobile app is the most popular globally in this space.

Opening a call asks nothing new of you. Make it public the same way you already do for your earnings calls. We take it from there, everything said becomes available for everyone the moment it's spoken. IR keeps doing what it does best. We handle the part that makes it fair for everyone else. Live, everywhere.

Regulators have already started pointing the market in this direction. In May 2024, ESMA issued a statement on pre-silent calls, reminding issuers that only non-inside information may be shared on these calls, and pointing to good practices that reduce the risk of unlawful disclosure of inside information that arises from calls that leave no public trace.

Among the practices ESMA highlights: announcing pre-silent calls in advance with details on date, topics, and participants, publishing the materials used on the call at the same time as the call happens, and keeping public records that let anyone access what was said. Every one of those recommendations points at the same underlying fix we're proposing – full, simultaneous, public access.

Regulators want a level field. Investors and analysts want to act on public information. IR wants to answer honestly without having to worry. The incentives are largely aligned. Everyone in this chain would be better off with open calls.

The first companies to make their calls public will be the ones credited with setting the standard everyone else eventually follows. In a domain like IR where trust is the scarcest asset, that is a reputation worth owning.

We'll help you own it. We'll help you tell your equity story, and we'll amplify it across our audience, because a company choosing transparency before it's required is exactly the kind of thing this market should be celebrating loudly.

The closed call only made sense in an era when reaching everyone at once was hard. That era is over. The technology to put every word in front of the whole market, the moment it's spoken, exists today. What's left is the decision to use it.

We've made our choice. We think it should be yours too.