Looking to the future

The positive impacts of an ESG investor day on your IR and company

Looking to the future

The positive impacts of an ESG investor day on your IR and company

If you’ve held an ESG investor day, the first step is to assess its value to the company against your KPIs, then determine whether it’s a tool that’s worth adding to the ongoing suite of regular investor relations activity, or whether it’s best left as a one-off.Ongoing transparency is a big consideration for AstraZeneca, which hosts an annual event to communicate its ESG activity. ‘It provides transparency, as a platform for the firm to highlight the progress made,’ says Lauren Swales, director of IR. ‘It also gives shareholders an opportunity to ask questions of those making ESG decisions. ESG is becoming a mainstream topic for all investors.’Get the event right, and the positive impact on tricky company issues can be felt. Shell found this at its 2022 event, says the company’s IR officer for ESG, Anna Dumanska. ‘We managed to deliver a message that our energy transition resolution is different from the shareholder resolution, and believe this has enabled the right voting outcomes at the AGM,’ she says.The success of an event can also be measured by the pressure it takes off other areas in the business, observes Ryan Weispfenning, vice president and head of IR at Medtronic. ‘Investors have been able to reference our event video, resulting in a significant decrease in one-off ESG meeting requests and inquiries on ESG matters,’ he says. ‘This has helped alleviate the pressure on the IR team, as well as the burden on the internal subject matter experts. Also, because the event content addressed many topics that regularly come up with proxy voters, the number of investor meeting requests to discuss our proxy ahead of our AGM also significantly decreased.’In deciding the way forward, it’s always worth considering the positive impact on other areas of the company, outside of the investor remit. ‘The C-suite really appreciated the event, but what was even more impactful, and somewhat unexpected going into the event, was the feedback we received from employees,’ Weispfenning adds. ‘We received comments from several employees who were inspired and energized by the event. I didn’t realize the impact an event like this can have on employee engagement and retention.’

Top tips: Advice from those who have been there, seen it and done it

Amit Bhalla, Schneider Electric

Analyze the ESG expectations of your investors and assess how your company meets them.
Identify the level of influence ESG investors have over your share register.
Evaluate your organization against your competitors.
Run pre-meeting surveys of investors and targets to identify which topics investors would like the event to cover.
Run feedback surveys of investor views on the event with recommendations for future events.

Louis Coppola, Governance & Accountability Institute

Be balanced with the bad and the good – the challenges and the accomplishments – and most investors will be respectful and engagement will go well.
Come prepared: you will have very smart, well-read and informed people in the room asking you some tough questions, so prepare and be ready.
Do the prep work to be aware of which issues investors are concerned about, both in your industry and at your company.

Anna Dumanska, Shell

Decide why you’re going to do an ESG investor day and clearly define your objectives.

Define your ideal attendee and promote the event early to get the right people to attend.
Make sure you have senior sponsorship for the event and, ideally, attendance of both management and the board.

Lauren Swales, AstraZeneca

Have a detailed Q&A document showing shareholder sustainability questions over the last six to nine months – this helps with consistency of messaging and highlights current topic trends.
Plan for every eventuality – sustainability questions are broad-based so ensure you have the right people in the room to answer the questions.
Have senior leaders join to show their engagement – but ensure they are fully briefed!

Ryan Weispfenning, Medtronic

Time the event to coincide with the launch of your sustainability/integrated report, to make your reports ‘come to life’ through a live event while simultaneously driving more interest in your publications.
Focus on the topics most important to your company and industry. If you haven’t already done so, conduct a materiality assessment and plan your ESG communication and event around these topics.
Take an inventory of the ESG questions you regularly receive from investors and make sure you are addressing them in your content.