A survey of current online reporting practices in South Africa

Abstract

The aim of the study being reported, was to determine the status of online reporting in South Africa. The history, advantages and disadvantages of web-based reporting were evaluated. A survey was undertaken among the top South African listed companies to determine the extent of their use of technology for online financial reporting and investor relations.The results of the survey indicate that the use of the internet by top South African companies has increased tremendously over the past number of years. The increased importance of online reporting is demonstrated by the fact that several companies not only provide copies of their annual financial statements on their website, but have also progressed to the second and the third stage of online reporting. Communication with investors, which is a part of online reporting, is very important. The results of the survey indicate that companies take this matter into account when preparing a home page on their website.From a comparison of some of the results of this survey with those of international surveys it can be concluded that South African companies are keeping abreast of international trends regarding the use of the Internet as a medium of communication with investors and shareholders.

Further evidence on web-based corporate disclosures in developed versus developing countries: A comparative analysis of nature and determinants in Egypt and the United Kingdom

“…Overall, the results indicate that the EGX 100 do not realize the potential of the Internet for communicating information and depend on the more traditional means. Therefore, we infer that WCD is still a new phenomenon that is considered in its evolutionary ( Momany and Al-Shorman, 2006 ), South Africa ( Venter, 2002 ;Barac, 2004 ), Croatia ( Pervan, 2005 ), Bangladesh ( Dutta and Bose, 2007 ;Khan et al , 2008 ), Greece ( Spanos and Mylonakis, 2007 ) and Cyprus ( Andrikopoulos and Diakidis, 2007 ). On the contrary, the frequency results for the FTSE 100 show great development.…”

An exploration of the online investor relations (IR) practices of companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)

“…Prior studies in South Africa on the use of company websites for communicating financial information and for other IR activities include those by Lymer, Debreceny, Gray and Rahman (1999) (South Africa and 21 other countries); Roberts (1999), Venter (2002), Loxton (2003), Barak (2004), Nel (2004), Bollen, Hassink and Bozic (2006) (South Africa and five other countries); as well as Nel and Baard (2006) (South Africa and four other African countries). Nel and Baard (2007) conducted the last available research on online investor communication practices for South Africa and four other African countries during June 2007.…”

The link between Internet investor relations and information asymmetry

“…Although there exists a substantial amount of research measuring the use of corporate websites as communication channel, both in South Africa (Barac 2004;Esterhuyse & Wingard 2016;Loxton 2003;Nel & Baard 2006;Venter 2002) and internationally (Aerts, Cormier & Magnan 2007;Chang et al 2008;Froidevaux 2004;Gajewski & Li 2015;Orens et al 2010;Trabelsi, Labelle & Dumontier 2008), the measurement instruments used by such studies are often criticised (as discussed in the literature review) and few of these studies explicitly measured investor relations.…”