Corporate event data vendor, Wall Street Horizon, recently reported that the number of Wall Street oriented conferences, roadshows, analyst meetings and company conference calls fell 31.5% in July 2022 when compared to the same month last year.
Wall Street Events – July of 2022
According to data provided by Wall Street Horizon, the total number of Wall Street related conferences and related events during July 2022 fell 31.5% from the total number of events held in the same month of last year, and plunged 73.6% from the number of events recorded during June 2022. Despite these declines, the total number of Wall Street events seen so far in 2022 rose 2.7% from the number of events seen in the first seven months of last year.
When you take a look at the underlying types of events that took place in 2022, it reveals an interesting pattern. The total number of bank and industry conferences held so far in 2022 rose 34.8% when compared to the same period in the previous year. This compares to the number of analyst meetings or investor days which rose 26.42% during this period, while the number of company travel or roadshows rose a more modest 12.3% in 2022 when compared to 2021. The number of company conference calls, however plunged 45.8% during the first seven months of 2022 when compared to the same period of last year. Purely bank sponsored events (conferences, analyst meetings, and company roadshows) surged 29.5% in 2022 versus the same period last year.
Our Take
The number of sell-side sponsored conferences, roadshows, and analyst meetings continues to rise in 2022 to levels seen pre-pandemic. However, the sharp drop in sell-side events seen this July compared to June is consistent with the seasonal weakness seen in recent years. We would suspect that this seasonal weakness will continue in August, only to rebound in the Fall.
Despite the rebound in the number of Wall Street events seen in 2022, the more important question is when will buy-side payments for these events recover to the levels seen before the pandemic? Most buy-side firms claim that the bulk of the conferences and analyst meetings seen in the past few years are far less valuable than in previous years when attendance was scarce, the questions were more focused, and high quality in person networking was available. It will be interesting to see if the sell-side will be able to reestablish the commercial value associated with these research related events.