PDAC 2021 – Charging investors £270 to attend
With covid preventing international travel, the organiser of PDAC 2021 wisely cancelled this year’s event and went virtual instead.
Given that the event is now virtual, I am surprised the organisers are charging C$490, or £270, for an investor to attend. This seems ridiculously high, and akin to paying an entrance fee to enter the local supermarket.
PDAC 2021 – Charging investors £270 to attend
With covid preventing international travel, the organiser of PDAC 2021 wisely cancelled this year’s event and went virtual instead.
Given that the event is now virtual, I am surprised the organisers are charging investors C$490, or £270, to attend. This seems ridiculously high, and, in my opinion, is akin to paying an entrance fee to enter your local supermarket!
Until the last couple of years the event was funded by up to 850 companies paying for booths in the Investors Exchange exhibition floor, major mining companies and government pavilions in the more exclusive business floor area where passes were expensive (to keep out us retail folk), and the major sponsors of the show.
Two years ago the show decided to charge a C$25 entry fee, or around £17 per day. This seemed mean given the money this show must generate, but not that high that it would put any serious investors off. The fee is also payable on the final day, for just four hours when many booths are unmanned as people recover from three hard days of evening festivities.
Given the organisers do not have the venue hire costs this year, which must be a substantial saving, and they are still charging participating companies the usual booth fee, and the event still has major sponsors, I cannot see the justification for charging investors such a high fee to attend.
I did communicate and ask why organisers why there were no passes only for the Investors Exchange area, as I could only find a pass fee of C$700 on their registration page, and they replied that they were “trying to be fair to everyone”, which makes no sense to me.
They have since replied and directed me to a lower priced C$490 limited access pass, so I guess that may have just been added in, maybe after people like myself complained, as I can’t recall seeing it before, and I did look closely a week ago.
The full range of passes available is HERE.
The number of participating companies, (omitting the Rio Tinto’s of this world as my niche is between C$20 million and C$1 billion market cap), is around 245, around 300 less than last year. I wonder if the lower number of companies is a reflection of them anticipating the admission fee would put people off attending?
After attending the PDAC for 15 years, I will not be participating in 2021 due to what I consider an outrageous entrance fee, for me to meet companies, that have paid to meet investors like myself!
In my opinion they should have left the entrance fee alone at $25 per day, or $100 for the show. I guess those on expense accounts will pay up but I don’t see why investors should, and I guess many, like myself, simply won’t
There have been many virtual conferences over the last year, and all have been free to attend, as they derive their income from the presenting companies and other sponsors. There are many more planned for 2021, so many of the companies at PDAC will be available there.
In conclusion, attending PDAC every year means you get gouged on the airfare, and extremely gouged on the hotel or Airbnb rates, so this just seems like an extension of that.
Presenting companies always complain there are too many people soliciting business and not too many investors at their booths, I wonder what it will be like this year?
.