Alexandra Cain hears from IROs on going beyond the C-suite, engaging retail shareholders and even taking cues from sports TV for deeper engagements
In these post-pandemic times, investors need a compelling reason to don a suit and leave their screens to attend investor meetings in person. New Zealand firm Fisher & Paykel Healthcare has that reason.
The IR team is taking investors to its manufacturing site in Tijuana, Mexico as part of its North American investor day this year. This involves taking about 40 investors, many of them from New Zealand and Australia, across the Mexican border and back in a day.
This is quite the feat in the age of Covid-19 and the seemingly endless number of natural disasters that routinely make travel chaotic. But if you are able to attend Fisher & Paykel Healthcare’s North American operations, it’s likely the RSVP is going to be a ‘yes’.
The North American investor day planned for mid-September 2023 resumes a program of interesting overseas investor days for the business, which makes devices for respiratory care and surgery and to treat obstructive sleep apnea.
‘We routinely held investor days in North America before the pandemic,’ says Fisher & Paykel Healthcare’s investor relations manager Hayden Brown. ‘We are finally getting the opportunity for our investors to meet with our North America and Mexico management teams again.’
After the Mexican site visit, the plan is to take the investor delegation to the Fisher & Paykel Healthcare offices in Irvine, California, to meet with its management and sales teams and hear from clinicians and doctors. The event requires significant strategizing to get the group in and out of Mexico in just one day, but Brown is confident the firm can pull it off.
‘We have a great team in Mexico, and a lot of people in San Diego travel to Mexico and back every day and vice versa,’ he says. ‘So the day will require significant planning but I think it’s achievable. We have such a solid team and community there, who all have a strong commitment to our values.
‘It’s so good to see that first-hand and it gives visitors a great perspective on our manufacturing site. It’s also great for our staff in Mexico to meet the investment community. When investors make the effort to get there, it sends a strong message to our team.’
Investor days are not just about showing shareholders the aesthetics of how our stores are fitted out
Taking a TV approachFisher & Paykel Healthcare last held a major investor day in May 2022, when it brought a large group of investors to New Zealand to see its operations and announced its Airvo 3 and anesthesia products. It used an innovative ESPN-style broadcasting style so global investors who could not go on the trip could still take part in it.
‘We had about 100 people on site in New Zealand,’ Brown recalls. ‘We started with a presentation on our R&D strategy before announcing two new products. We set up two of our labs to show off these products and we were able to move everyone around our manufacturing site. If you were one of those on site, you got to talk to the management team, see demonstrations of our new products, go to lunch and take part in a site tour.’
Brown says the company wanted to be able to offer the same experience to the online investor community so it decided to broadcast the event like a football game.
‘We set up an online studio where two of our employees were able to present and talk to the online audience,’ he says. ‘The presenters would do a piece to camera then flip to an outside location. Then the camera would cut back to the studio, where the presenters and management could talk through the business in more detail before cutting back to the live event.’
Back to reality The pandemic promoted a rethink of how investor relations is conducted, especially when it comes to international stakeholders. Where once it was routine for global shareholders to visit the assets they own, webcasts and Teams meetings mean overseas site visits are less of a priority now, allowing investors to save time and money traveling, avoid jet lag and reduce their environmental footprint.
Without a major announcement in the pipeline, Irina Zhurba, head of IR for spectacles retailer Mister Spex in Germany, doesn’t see a capital markets day happening this year. She anticipates when she does go back to holding a capital markets day that the event will be hybrid, involving in-person events and live-streaming.
Zhurba doesn’t advocate broadcasting prerecorded videos during live events. ‘You lose the spontaneity and the body language; it loses authenticity,’ she explains. She does, however, recommend rehearsing executives presenting on the day to ensure they are polished.
She also believes the style of investor event a company hosts should be largely determined by its business model. ‘We have an omni-channel model and we sell through online and bricks and mortar stores so a hybrid investor day suits our company,’ she explains. ‘If you’re a fully online business, you could have a fully online investor day because there’s no need to showcase your physical operations.
‘Our stores are an important part of our story for equity markets, especially for people who have never been to them, because the more stores we open, the higher our profits go. Investor days are not just about showing shareholders the aesthetics of how our stores are fitted out.’
Zhurba says the event would likely be held in Germany, where most of the firm's stores are located. In terms of who should take part in the day from the company’s side, she says it’s an idea to involve the executive as well as the second-level management team.
‘It’s always interesting to hear from the C-suite members as well as the people directly under them who are responsible for executing strategy; they are the ones who make it all work,’ she points out. ‘They are the ones who can convince our investors the story we’re telling isn’t just a nice story but is fully ingrained into the company’s DNA.’
It’s worth noting that while Mister Spex isn’t hosting a large capital markets day this year, Zhurba routinely takes individual investors on site visits. ‘It’s helpful for them to speak to store managers, see the operating systems and watch how eye tests are done, to understand what we do,’ she says.
We present and host meetings at investor conferences, whether or not we’re covered by the sell side
Back on the roadBenjamin Tucker is the IR manager for risk and compliance software firm Marlowe, which is UK-headquartered. The company held an in-person capital markets day on January 11 this year to give the market an in-depth look at its software offerings, which comprise around 10 percent of its revenues.
‘This gave investors an opportunity to meet the management teams behind these software products, people to whom shareholders wouldn’t usually have access,’ Tucker says. ‘This was the first in-person event we have held since Covid and it was really well received.
‘We also prerecorded sections of the event in order to give our overseas investors access to the same information local investors receive. The typical format for our results is a prerecorded presentation followed by a live Q&A and, although this is something we will likely revisit for our full-year results, we might do an in-person event this year.’
Like Zhurba, Tucker wants to offer his existing and prospective shareholders access to members of the business beyond just the executive team, whether that be divisional CEOs, the chief technical officer, integration specialists or board members. This helps to round out people’s understanding of the company.
In addition to its institutional program, communicating with retail investors is a priority for Marlowe. ‘We recently did a Q&A at an event for retail shareholders held on the Investor Meet Company platform,’ Tucker says.
‘We want to make sure we maintain positive dialogue with our retail holders and give them access to our CEO and CFO, not just the IR function. I also make sure I have time available for retail shareholders in my diary. They are an important driver of our share price so we need to keep an open and positive dialogue with them.’
Debbie Hancock, Hasbro’s senior vice president of investor relations, says when she designs her investor day, she makes sure the time investors commit to attending an event provides them with incremental information, connections and brand experiences they can’t get through other events or by attending remotely.
‘Significant time is committed to Q&A, both during the session and in person,’ she says.
When it comes to retail investors, while they are not the focus of a specific program, the toy company’s IR team works hand in hand with its communications team to activate news across social and corporate platforms.
‘This ensures that the information being discussed on a multi-hour webcast is also communicated in short, bite-size messages for other audiences,’ Hancock explains.
Rationing resourcesFriederike Edelmann, vice president of investor relations at Walnut Creek, California-headquartered Central Garden & Pet, plans to host her next investor day on the back of a significant future – yet-to-be determined – announcement. The business distributes numerous lawn, garden and pet supplies brands.
‘Our strategy hasn’t changed since our inaugural investor day and we expect to hold our next investor day, hybrid or virtually only, when we have something substantially new to tell,’ Edelmann says. ‘But this year the plan is to take the investor day presentation that we presented a couple of years ago and turn that into a factbook we update on a yearly basis.
‘As part of our investor relations program, we meet with our top shareholders after we announce our earnings and we present and host meetings at investor conferences, whether or not we’re covered by the sell side. And we are always available for calls if investors are interested to speak with us.’
Edelmann has secured a new sell-side analyst to follow the business, which is the result of actively working with the market and reaching this analyst at the right point in time. ‘He was looking for additional coverage and we fit his profile,’ she explains.
Institutions aside, the business doesn’t purposely recruit retail investors, largely because the IR team doesn’t have the resources to actively engage with them.
‘We have a very small retail investor base and we like to keep it that way. It’s mostly a capacity issue,’ Edelmann explains. ‘We have only 1.5 people in the IR team. I believe we’re better off focusing on expanding our institutional shareholder base and being a valuable partner to the sell side. It may be different for some of the bigger, well-known consumer brand companies with larger investor relations teams, or if you are a company that impacts the local community, like mining or energy. Then retail shareholders might make sense in terms of community outreach.’
There is value to be had doing capital markets events in person. People want to see the whites of management’s eyes
Best of both worldsAs for the future, many IROs think hybrid events that have a live and webcast component are here to stay. Tucker is one of them. ‘Hybrid investor days allow your entire share base to participate without the need to travel,’ he says. ‘But there is definitely value to be had doing capital markets events in person. People want to see the whites of management’s eyes.’
International roadshows are also on the cards for Marlowe. ‘We are an AIM-listed company and we want to get our name out there as far and as wide as possible,’ Tucker continues. ‘The US is a key target area and we are leveraging our North American CEO to meet with investors there. We also intend to get our UK-based CEO out there in the coming months.’
He notes that the IR function will have been to four European cities in the previous six months alone by year-end. ‘We've had a fair amount of success from that,’ he says. ‘I always find investor engagement is significantly better when it’s done face to face.’
Overall, it’s horses for courses when it comes to the right investor day model for a business. In-person events are back but they are being used more judiciously as IR teams manage their own workloads and balance their investors’ needs with the strategic importance of market announcements. While investors will still get on a plane for the right reason, if they can get the same understanding about a business using technology, they will.
