In our seventh study on the association between the timing of the Annual General Meetings and financial performance of companies, we find that despite it being a disruptive year, the trend we have observed in each of the six past years holds: companies with relatively weaker financial performance wait till the last minute to hold their AGMs. The chart shows the median Return on Equity for the NIFTY500 companies, when companies are bucketed on then the basis of the dates of their AGM. We often joke and say that you can build your equity portfolio based on the dates of shareholder meetings.

And many more of the loss-making companies push back holding their AGM. This is corroborated by the fact that in FY20, of the 49 NIFTY 500 companies that reported losses, 57% of them held their AGMs between September- December.

To read our report ‘2020: The last minute’ click here.