'This technology is not just like a normal meeting': Broadridge CEO says about virtual shareholder meetings

Telemeetings skyrocket as more people work from home due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Broadridge CEO Tim Gokey joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move to discuss.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Well, many, many companies right now are switching their annual shareholder meetings and other types of meetings to online through necessity, obviously, right now. One of the companies that is helping them do that is called Broadridge. The CEO of that company, Tim Gokey, is joining us now from New York. Tim, thank you so much for being here.

So obviously, we're all doing a lot of remote meetings right now. And in fact, one could call this a remote meeting. But when we're talking about a shareholder meeting or investor meeting, there's more than just-- involved than just dialing up a Zoom or a Google Hangout or a Skype. Talk to me about what kind of demands there are in that kind of meeting and what you guys are doing to help.

TIM GOKEY: Absolutely, and Julie, thank you very much for having me today. You're right, this technology is not like just a normal meeting because we need to validate on the way in that everyone participating is indeed a shareholder.

We facilitate a secure two-way communication and allow queuing up with the questions and moderating the questions to make sure that everyone gets heard, and then importantly, enabling real-time voting so that we can take voting during the meeting, and it will be counted and tabulated as part of that.

Because it is-- the purpose of these meetings is to vote on specific proposals and to elect the board of directors. So it's definitely sort of that next level in terms of complexity and value relative to a normal meeting.

DAN HOWLEY: This is Dan Howley here. I just have a question on, you know, the uptick of this and how people get to participate from their own homes if they have to. How does that kind of work?

TIM GOKEY: Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, in terms of the uptick, this has been something that has been around for a while. We introduced it in 2009, maybe a little ahead of its time. We had four companies in 2009. And that has grown over time to just over 300 last year, and it is growing because of, really, the benefits of much easier accessibility of greater participation and better costs for investors and for companies.

And so for you to participate when you receive a communication that you'll receive either as a shareholder either digitally, if you like to bet, or through a mailing if you're still on that method of communication, there will be a control number there and a site to go to. And you can tune in right from your desk.

JULIE HYMAN: So Tim, you said last year, you saw more than 300 companies do this. I imagine that that number is going to go up this year. So you're one of the companies that actually, because you're helping people right now, could actually be poised to gain financially from this. So I'm curious if you can talk to me about any numbers that you're seeing thus far. We've been hearing from the likes of a Zoom or a Slack, for example, the big surge in numbers. What do you guys see?

TIM GOKEY: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we are still talking literally to hundreds of companies. But we've gone so far in terms of confirmed meetings from 326 last year to over 1,250 this year. And as you know, there are just under 4,000 public companies in the US. So it's getting to be a very significant share of companies that are doing this. And there are still companies that are in the consideration phase. You know, those who have their meetings a little bit later are still deciding how they're going to go.

JULIE HYMAN: How sticky, then, do you think that is going to be when this is all said and done? Because there are other reasons, obviously, that this is appealing to people. You know, it used to be 10, 20 years ago, you would get these sort of hard shareholders who would travel to all the meetings for companies. You get less of that now. So do you think that those 1,200 companies are going to stick around as clients when this is hopefully past us?

TIM GOKEY: Yeah. You know, it's hard to predict. What I do know is that the companies that have done it in the past have really seen the benefits and liked it. And so once they've tried it, they have continued forward. Now they tried it under different circumstances than we're seeing now. But the benefits they saw were that increased accessibility. They've seen significantly higher participation and lower cost.

And just an example, I was speaking earlier this week to the corporate secretary of a Fortune 100 company, who did their first virtual meeting last year. And they said they saw participation that went up by more than a factor of four, relative to what they've seen before. And so they're very enthusiastic, and I think we'll see how things play out.

But just like I know I'm going to be doing a lot more video calls in the future than I did in the past because I've really gotten used to it and adopt the technology, I think there'll be a lot of people that see the benefits and also see-- but really, what's important also is the quality of the interaction with investors during the meeting. And I think once you experience that, you see that this really is a quality experience.

JULIE HYMAN: Tim, thank you so much for your perspective. Tim Gokey is the CEO of Broadridge Financial Solutions. By the way, Broadridge shares up about 1 and 1/2% today. This is about a $10 billion market cap company. Thanks again, Tim. Appreciate it.

TIM GOKEY: Great. Thank you, Julie.