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Infrequently Asked Questions #IAQ

Aug. 21, 2014 8:48 AM ET1 Comment
Marty Chilberg profile picture
Marty Chilberg's Blog
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Infrequently Asked Questions #IAQ is a new project intended to provide a different kind of article on Seeking Alpha. My goal is to create informative articles which take the form of CFO interviews of public companies. What follows is an initial outline of what this project is.

Objectives

  1. Publish substantive articles in the form of CFO interviews targeted to retail investors.
  2. Improve the retail investor's understanding of a target company.
  3. Utilize social media to solicit questions and create interest in the article in the planning stage.

Approach

  1. Select a company that has a limited base of articles on Seeking Alpha, but has some compelling attribute(s).
  2. Research the company thoroughly to be able to articulate questions that serve to educate the audience stand alone.
  3. Contact the target company to schedule a conference call.
  4. Solicit questions from other retail investors using Twitter.
  5. Ask questions even if it's unlikely the CFO will respond, leaving plenty of room for a "no comment" response.
  6. Write up the conversation in the form of Q & A but clearly state that the content is my recollection of the conversation rather than a transcript of the meeting. This is not an attempt to get quotes but rather to educate the audience.
  7. Send the draft article to the CFO to provide an opportunity to clarify or redact any responses.
  8. Submit to Seeking Alpha for possible publication.

Initial Target-Sequenom

Making Sequenom my initial target was an obvious choice. My knowledge of the company is pretty deep and the CFO Carolyn Beaver has been gracious enough to allow me to call her on occasion. I solicited questions on Twitter over the past week, asking readers to go to an investor forum to leave their recommended questions. For a first effort, it went quite well. We had a couple hundred visits and about a dozen questions recommended. We'll see where it goes from here, but certainly seems like an idea worth pursuing.

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