IMAGINE if you had more control over the information which investors use to make decisions and set their expectations by. Imagine if you never again had to review and correct your company profile on public web portals. And imagine if earnings estimates actually came from the most informed source: your company.

And what if all of this was available to you free of charge. Sounds great, doesn't it? And that's just what lies around the corner thanks to a groundbreaking initiative called OpenCompany, announced today by Shareholder.com at the National Investor Relations Institute 2002 Annual Conference in Palm Desert, California.

OpenCompany (www.opencompany.info) is an online repository of company information controlled and owned by the companies themselves and distributed free to institutional and retail investors either directly or through other information distributors, including financial web portals and data aggregators.

Using new XBRL technology
OpenCompany uses Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), an important new technology billed as the most significant tool since the invention of the spreadsheet program. XBRL has won widespread support from industry groups and accounting jurisdictions worldwide and is now beginning to emerge as a new technology standard for how companies collect, share and disclose financial information to investors. Microsoft recently began providing financial information in XBRL.

For investors, particularly institutional investors, XBRL will provide an opportunity to analyze information sourced directly from the company in a format comparable to that of similar companies. Investors will be able to more easily import and manipulate data for many companies using their own models, all at lower cost since they no longer have to rely on third-party data providers.

OpenCompany, however, isn't intended to be a source for traditional financial statement information (at least not yet). Rather it will initially focus on a menu of information currently provided by firms that take public company information, repackage it and then sell it to institutional subscribers.

It's no coincidence, however, that Shareholder.com's major rivals, CCBN and more recently the Thomson Financial/PR Newswire alliance, are big players in reselling IR information to institutional subscribers. Sometimes public companies actually pay twice to have their information distributed.

Puts companies in control of their own info
Shareholder.com president Ron Gruner, a booster for open standards and the free access to disclosure information that XBRL represents, says his firm opposes the rising commercialization of corporate data. He points specifically to the recent practice of webcast providers charging public companies to broadcast their information, then compiling a written summary of the webcast for resale to institutional investors without the public company's input.

"We're taking the position that the company owns its data. We're giving them the ability to control it themselves if they so choose. We've always been advocates for public companies," says Gruner.

To start, any company will be able to use OpenCompany for the following types of information:

• Corporate profile and contact information. This will perhaps be the most popular feature of OpenCompany among IR professionals. Currently, web-based profile information is scattered across hundreds of different sites and vendors. By companies controlling and keep their profile information current, all sites with an OpenCompany feed will automatically show the correct information. Information that investors receive is also free of any third-party interpretation, although many less sophisticated investors will still be willing to pay for expert, third-party interpretation.
  
  
• Earnings release and conference call dates and times. Currently mostly distributed over closed, proprietary networks, these would be open and free to all investors.
  
  
• A company's own earnings estimates. Companies that have been stung by wayward analyst consensus estimates will be motivated to provide their own estimates. Indeed, Gruner says a survey of earnings releases by his company found that a surprising number of companies are providing specific earnings estimates. Through OpenCompany, companies can now distribute their own estimates, which investors can then compare to the consensus estimates of analysts.
  
  
• A company's own conference call summaries. Both CCBN and Thomson Financial sell these to institutional investors and public companies. Companies can produce their own synopsis and provide open access to all investors. (See my recent comments on conference call summaries and transcripts.)