Issuer Direct Corp. (ISDR) Increasingly Prominent One-Stop-Shop for Targeted PR/IR Engagement, Cloud-Based Compliance, Disclosure Solutions

As one of the leading pioneers in the world of secure, cloud-driven regulatory compliance, as well as investor communication solutions, Issuer Direct (NYSE MKT: ISDR) is currently the go-to Disclosure Management System (DMS) source for thousands of compliance issuers around the world, as well as for hundreds of corporate issuers, which derive substantial advantages from the company’s affordable, but extremely robust suite of branded solutions.

Issuer Direct’s already widely successful toolset stands to remain at the head of the pack alongside players like Certent, which was recently selected by PR Newswire to augment its own flexible XBRL tagging and filing solution with Certent’s own DM tech. Compliance looks to be one of the hottest, fastest-growing segments of the $3 billion and growing legal technology solutions market (http://dtn.fm/x7sO5). There is plenty of room here for an agile, cost-competitive player with advanced technology and a mountain of in-house experience like ISDR, even with bigger sharks like IBM (NYSE: IBM) and SAP (NYSE: SAP) circling the market.

The same kind of rock-solid value brought to the table with ISDR’s proprietary cloud-based DMS framework, so noteworthy for its security, performance and ease of use, is also present in the company’s other offerings, whether we are talking about Issuer Direct’s premier regional, national and global news/communications network, Accesswire®; the company’s extremely robust media, advisor and investor targeting dataset platform, Classify®; or ISDR’s SEC filing marvel, known as Blueprint®.

Accesswire is particularly interesting given that the platform was designed from the ground up specifically for public companies, as well as due to the sheer scale of Accesswire’s end-user footprint and the ease with which public companies can join the Accesswire News Network before almost immediately using it to disseminate messages to that huge audience in real-time. Underlying this supremely attractive megaphone functionality is a powerful analytics engine that exposes information like actual social engagement metrics of a given release, as well as the subsequent/relevant audience targeting solutions, via a highly intuitive dashboard. Putting the power into users’ hands, allowing them to really understand what works (or just how well whatever they are doing is working), ensures confidence in PR budgets and makes the platform an easy sell to public companies who are hungry to engage the investment community.

Because ISDR so intimately understands the regulatory environment, the announcements that need to go to SEDAR or EDGAR are always routed. Accesswire is partnered with the top names in business media today, such as Reuters (NYSE:TRI), The Wall Street Journal (NASDAQ: NWSA) and The New York Times (NYSE: NYT), as well as Stock Exchanges, local newspapers of record, The Associated Press and United Press International, and digital data feeders like Yahoo! Finance (NASDAQ: YHOO) – to name but a few.

Little wonder then that ISDR was recently able to report Q2 revenue growth from its Accesswire press release business of 18 percent (compared to Q1), which was up a handsome 73 percent year-over-year (http://dtn.fm/WCSu6). Accompanied by a 74 percent gross margin for the quarter and an additional $1 million in operational cash flow, the quarterly dividend increase issued back in July on the strength of continued positive earnings and cash flow has substantially encouraged ISDR shareholders to remain bullish about the company’s prospects. Accesswire’s distribution channels line up superbly with the company’s investor network and investor calendar, as well as ISDR’s public company outreach platform, providing unparalleled venue reach that includes the Dow Jones Network and the Factiva system, as well as top broker-dealers. Needless to say, this is a winning proposition to public companies, and business has been very good for Issuer Direct.

In fact, revenues from platform and technology solutions were up 20 percent last quarter when compared to Q1, with both Blueprint and Classify showing marked traction. Even as the traditional Annual Report Service (ARS) business flags amid an ongoing shift to digital over hardcopy, and market commoditization hammers XBRL demand, Issuer Direct has actually prospered. Intelligent restructuring of channel partner agreements in its ARS game, as well as receptivity to the company’s innovative cloud-based offerings, have allowed ISDR to soar where lesser operators may have folded altogether.

Blueprint deserves a closer look here, for instance, due not only to a recent partnership expansion with the London Stock Exchange Group that includes the SEC reporting platform’s license to LSEG’s RNS (regulatory news service), but because the LSEG deal is just the latest example of end-market resonance for Issuer Direct. LSEG’s RNS wanted a way to automate the reformatting of their own systemically generated HTML into SEC EDGAR-compliant documentation, and the readily adaptable Blueprint platform was perfect for the job – a deal which has crystallized an already tight-knit relationship between LSEG and ISDR. Issuer Direct’s CEO, Balbirnie, was keen to point out the number of high profile clients that have already signed on with Blueprint as a hallmark of the platform’s inherent value. The top dog at LSEG/RNS roundly affirmed this conclusion, while also pointing to Blueprint’s scalability as leaving the door open to a host of future applications.

That scalability is a big sell for Blueprint, alongside the platform’s baseline cost-effectiveness and ease of use, as it allows great confidence that ISDR can fulfill the role of trusted regulatory platform provider for years to come (no matter how big or small the client). The ability to handle essentially any document type via a proprietary compliance editing platform like Blueprint, which alleviates the historically time-consuming and cumbersome process of regulatory filing, when combined with the company’s DMS platform, makes for a super-fast, real-time project creation/editing workflow that has to be experienced to be believed. The ironclad value of the company’s DMS platform, engineered to meet and keep up with the ever more stringent demands of regulatory authorities like the SEC, DTCC and FINRA, is further enhanced by dynamic shareholder communication features.

Issuer Direct even offers naturally parallel services such as stock transfer agent and proxy services, as well as full-spectrum document design, formatting and typesetting – the company even does printing/fulfillment with real-time tracking. Transfer agent duties come second nature to an outfit like Issuer Direct, and with the in-house talent to easily handle everything from electronic stock issuance and management, to document preparation and review, ISDR is increasingly seen as a one-stop-shop for a variety of such services.

For more information, visit www.IssuerDirect.com

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