7th annual WOOD’s Winter Wonderland
The largest Emerging Europe conference of the year: a one-of-a-kind event with unrivalled corporate participation
Last week, 3-7 December, WOOD & Company hosted its 7th annual Winter Wonderland conference in Prague. This one-of-a-kind event, the biggest Emerging Europe conference of the year, connects money managers from around the world with the most compelling companies in Frontier and Emerging Europe.
The 7th edition of our conference strived once again to deepen the understanding of the regional investment climate, and provided a platform for discussion amongst senior members of management, key policy- and decision-makers, and a broad range of influential investors. The event attracted a larger-than-ever corporate attendance, 188 companies arrived in Prague to connect with 217 institutional investors, representing 116 investment houses. The participants attended 3,139 meetings in total.
The first day of the event was dedicated to site visits, with investors getting the chance to explore Czech-based facilities owned by listed companies. The tours included: a trip with a CEZ representative to the Tusimice power plant; a visit to the Nikom vanadium plant, Evraz’s facility; an oil & gas retail tour of select petrol stations (PKN Orlen, OMV and Shell); and a tour of commercial properties owned by Atrium and CA Immo.
The main section of the conference was held from Tuesday to Friday at the Radisson Blu Alcron hotel in Prague, with each day focused on different sectors: Tuesday – financial, real estate and TMT; Wednesday – consumer, healthcare and diversified corporates; Thursday-Friday – energy, utilities, industrials and materials. Investors also got the opportunity to meet with WOOD & Company’s Equity Analysts to discuss sectors, companies, and equity-relevant macro and strategy views.
As in the previous year, our event also offered interesting and relevant panel sessions. On Tuesday, we welcomed Mark Robinson, CEE Research Specialist from Colliers International, who spoke on “CEE Real Estate: How close to the peak of the cycle?”. On Wednesday, we held two moderated panel discussions. The first was “Monetary policy strategies in an increasingly complex world”, which brought together professionals on financial, monetary and macroeconomic affairs. Gyula Pleschinger, Member of the Monetary Policy Council of Magyar Nemzeti Bank, Valentin Lazea, Chief Economist of National Bank of Romania and Tomáš Holub, Executive Director of Monetary Department from Czech National Bank discussed this topic with WOOD&Co.’s Senior Macroeconomist, Raffaella Tenconi. The second panel saw WOOD&Co.’s Equity Analyst Ildar Davletshin debate investment opportunities in Kazakhstan and Central Asia with Timothy Bennett, CEO of The Astana International Exchange (AIX) and Alisher A. Djumanov, President of Silk Capital, who examined “Uzbekistan, Central Asia and the Belt & Road Initiative”.
Event statistics
INVESTORS 217 investorsfrom 116investment houses and 3,139 meetings in total (last year: 240 investors from 136 investment houses, with 3,325 investor meetings).
COMPANIES 188 companies (last year: 167), with 375 company reps registered (last year: 319).
1,713 company meetings (last year 1,572): 1,028 1x1s; 309 2x1s; 173 3x1s; and 203 group meetings (last year: 902 1x1s; 283 2x1s; 137 3x1s; and 250 group meetings).
