Grant Bartucci, associate director of corporate access and broker relations at Point72 Asset Management, talks to Ben Ashwell about meeting efficiency, issuer communication and the return to in-person engagement
How big is the corporate access team at Point72 and when was it created? It’s a team of four in total but that includes my part of the group, which is two people and is heavily focused on direct interactions with companies. The other side of the team focuses more on the sell-side corporate access we consume. We talk to each other every day as a full team and we’re continually working together – corporate access isn’t in a vacuum, whether we consume it through the sell side or directly. We ultimately want to make sure every interaction is meaningful from our side and the company side.
How does corporate access work at Point72? Does it all go through your team, or can issuers expect inquiries to come through both your team and portfolio managers/analysts? It’s a bit of both. Not everything comes through our team. A big part of what we do is to make sure we have relationships with companies either through our team or directly through the investment professionals. We have a lot of analysts and portfolio managers who have seasoned relationships with management teams and the last thing I would want to do is step into that relationship. Companies can hear from me directly or from a portfolio manager or analyst they’ve known for a number of years.
Has there been an increase in inbound meeting requests from IR teams and issuers in general? Our situation is somewhat unique in that we’re so active in our outreach. We will get inbounds from companies we speak to a lot because they know we will want to reach out to them, but I wouldn’t say there’s been an increase in inbound. The most inbounds are from small caps that are trying to get their story out – perhaps a newer public company or a company at a new market cap level that’s doing targeting on its own. For the most part we’re the initiator of the outreach but we do welcome inbounds. When did you join Point72 and how has corporate access changed since? I started my role in corporate access in 2015. That was really our first foray into having a dedicated resource on behalf of outreach to companies. Part of that was preparing for the onset of Mifid II, which was a big part of the discussion at the time, but it wasn’t only that. It was a decision to invest the time and resources to make sure we have great relationships. We’ve always had those relationships through our portfolio managers and analysts, but we wanted to institutionalize that.
What’s changed in corporate access since the Covid-19 outbreak? The big one is that everything is forced into the virtual setting. In terms of the interactions themselves, I think it’s probably opened up the lines of communication more. You’d think you might lose a lot of that communication with everyone working remotely and in their own silo. But public companies have been very active in making sure the lines of communication were open from the beginning. In the early days of Covid, companies didn’t know what was going on, but they made sure they were still speaking to investors. That was something we’re very thankful for and value highly.
The virtual setting has its pros and cons. It’s largely been more efficient in terms of the number of meetings you can host and the number of people who can and do attend. Overall, however, the value of corporate access hasn’t changed. It’s still a hugely important part of our process.
To what extent have you been able to get more representatives from Point72 involved in meetings during Covid-19? It’s been easier to do that. We can set up the meetings and make sure we’re co-ordinated internally. We know companies are even more inundated now with requests and the best we can do is make sure they’re as efficient as they can be.
In addition, we’ve had situations where we get more of our teams in the meeting – which means we get an hour, rather than 30 minutes.
How has your relationship with sell-side corporate access evolved over time? When buy-side corporate access started, it was initially thought that all of these funds were hiring corporate access to only do it by themselves. But we’re big consumers of corporate access through the sell side and we highly value those relationships. The sell side knows we want to have direct relationships with companies and it can help facilitate that.
At this moment in time, are your analysts and portfolio managers more interested in meeting with portfolio companies, or is there also an interest in prospective companies? For us, it’s both. And that hasn’t changed just because of the current situation. Our analysts are experts in the industries we cover. They’re meeting with all of the companies they hold active positions in as well as adjacent sub-sectors that they may be looking to invest in.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, have your portfolio managers favored any particular form of virtual corporate access: conferences, investor days, bus tours, roadshows, and so on? I think the highest-value form of corporate access for us has been the one-on-one virtual non-deal roadshow. That’s where you get the most bang for your buck – as well as the most intimate setting.
One of the inarguable maxims in corporate access is that it’s great to be in the same room as managers so you can look them in the eye and shake their hand. Do you think Covid-19 has changed that at all, or is there a desire to get back to in-person meetings as soon as possible? We still very much value the in-person interaction. It's something that will always be part of our fundamental research process. During the pandemic, everything is virtual and we’ve made an effort to meet with companies because it’s important, but I don’t think that’s changed our overall view that face-to-face meetings are key and hugely important to our process.
That said, there may be times in the future where a virtual meeting might make sense. In the past, if you were planning a trip and schedules didn’t work out, you’d probably just reschedule the trip. Now that people have seen that virtual meetings can be meaningful and supplemental to in-person meetings, I imagine they’ll retain some of them rather than replace them all.
