Amazon CEO Discusses His Approach to Investor Relations

At the annual Business Insider conference recently, former sell-side analyst Henry Blodget asked Amazon (ticker AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos about his investor relations strategy:

BI's HENRY BLODGET: You talked about what a lot of CEOs do in terms of trying to drive that stock price, selling the stock. You told me something when we we’re outside that is extraordinary, which is that you spend six hours a year on investor relations.

AMAZON CEO JEFF BEZOS: Yes. We do a lot of unusual things there. We don’t meet with our biggest investors. We meet with investors who have low portfolio turnover. Many investment funds have very high portfolio turnover. They’re not really investors — they’re traders. There’s nothing wrong with that: It’s just a different thing. Where you are going to spend your time and your energy is one of the most important decisions you get to make in life. We all have a limited amount of time, and where you spend it and how you spend it is just an incredibly levered way to think about the world. 

If you’re going to spend time explaining the stock…or the company really…we don't really explain the stock..we explain the company, you should do it with people who are long-term investors, rather than traders. That’s our point of view.

Watch the entire interview here (starting at the 12 min mark is discussion of IR).

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