Where to start?
In a highly regulated industry where judgment rather than luck determines success, there can be little doubt that behind every effective IR team lies an impactful IR strategy at the heart of its operations. But what does a such a strategy look like? And amid the changes to investor engagement served up by the Covid-19 pandemic, how are those plans evolving?
A compelling IR strategy is critical to raising your company’s profile and increasing shareholder reach, but determining where to start can be tough. When shaping your overall strategy, going back to basics and working out your overarching goals and what’s vital to the success of the IR team is a logical place to begin.
Trey Campbell, vice president of IR at Luminar Technologies, outlines the three fundamental factors underlying his team’s plan: ‘Great communication between Luminar and investors that contributes to a fair valuation, building trusting and candid relationships with current and potential shareholders, and accountability, transparency and high integrity are all key. The strategy and mission are consistent – the tactics can fluctuate.’
Strategy is about choices we make around where to put our time and resources
Adapting to the environmentJeff Siemon is vice president of IR at General Mills. Outlining his approach to developing an IR strategy, he comments: ‘In my view, strategy is about choices we make around where to put our time and resources. The structure of our IR strategy looks the same year to year: first, deliver clear and compelling messaging – that is, optimizing the ‘what’ we say. Second, execute best-in-class external outreach, leveraging modern tools and communication vehicles: taking our message and conveying it to investors. Third, execute compelling internal outreach: taking what we’re hearing from investors and the market and ensuring our board, senior management and broad employee base understand those perspectives.
‘Within that strategic structure, we adjust our priorities and plans each year to adapt to the current needs of the market and our enterprise. For example, for messaging, we’re currently working to further enhance our ESG messaging, with a focus on bringing to life how we are a leader in advancing regenerative agriculture within the food industry.
‘For external outreach, we’re currently focusing on expanding our international shareholder base as those shareholders tend to be longer-term-oriented and more aligned with how we manage our business for the long term. We’re doing that by increasing our in-person touchpoints, proactively reaching out to targets through leading sell-side networks and crafting our messaging to be more impactful with an international audience.
‘For internal outreach, we’ve identified specific functional and business teams within General Mills and we’ve created a presentation on investor perspectives building shareholder value that we’re presenting to those teams.’
At Prologis, Jill Sawyer, vice president of investor relations, has her own approach. ‘Our strategy puts the customer first, by which we mean our investors and analysts,’ she says. ‘For analysts – given we have more than 20 providing coverage – we divvy them up and each member of our team is assigned as the main point of contact for that analyst for all things such as non-deal roadshows, modeling help and other questions.
‘For investors, we take every single call request and try to get back to them as quickly as possible, even if it’s just to tell them we are tracking down the answers and will get back to them as soon as we can. For our executives, we send short and concise updates when warranted to keep them in the know, but also respecting their inboxes. For events, we try to keep them differentiated and memorable for our attendees.’
Setting prioritiesBut how far in advance should IR teams set their IR calendar? How should they decide what events to prioritize?
‘Most of our strategy is flexible and my advice would be to start early, but don’t get too fixed and keep reviewing your strategy,’ suggests Richard Williams, executive vice president of IR at Unilever. ‘We agree our plans and objectives as a team for 2023 after the summer and then do a rough-cut view about four months before the end of the year for the following year. We then review it every month from then on throughout the year.
‘We have set events we know are high quality and then we research other potentials, in part by seeing who attends. Our plans are agreed with the chief executive and CFO and then the board is informed.’
The importance of internal input and alignment is also highlighted by Sawyer. ‘We gather feedback from our CEO and CFO, who feed into this process outside of our team,’ she says.
‘We also work collaboratively with the rest of our executive managers and ask for feedback from all of our colleagues on information and delivery. I would advise IR professionals to foster as much collaboration as possible between IR and internal teams, with consistent touch points and feedback loops.’
Our strategy puts the customer first, by which we mean our investors and analysts
