MoneyShow can help!
Is there such a thing as a ‘perfect’ shareholder? As an investor relations professional, you know the answer is ‘no’. As an exercise, however, let’s say you could create one out of whole cloth. What characteristics would you imbue it with?
You would probably want a shareholder that is likely to stick with your company through both short-term corporate challenges and periods of broader market volatility. You’d almost certainly want one that represents one of the largest pools of capital on the planet.
You’d also want one that can help amplify your firm’s messaging with family, friends and social media acquaintances. You’d want one more likely to side with management during contentious shareholder votes. And, especially if your company has a smaller market capitalization, you’d want a shareholder that provides an important source of liquidity and trading volume.
Here’s the good news: you’ve just described a typical retail investor! Even better, with the right outreach strategy, you can attract many more of them to your firm. That in turn will benefit all shareholders and your company as a whole.
First, it’s important to realize that retail investors are a large and growing force in the capital markets. They already represented around 52 percent of global assets under management in 2021, and the strategic consulting firm INDEFI expects that to grow to 61 percent by 2030.
Meanwhile, roughly 58 percent of Americans report owning stock directly or indirectly in an April Gallup survey. That has increased by 3 percentage points in just the past two years. So how can IR professionals best serve this increasingly powerful shareholder base?
Right on the MoneyShowThey can start by recognizing and appreciating the benefits of doing so, rather than focusing solely or mostly on institutional investors because of their size and influence on valuation. Understand that the liquidity, loyalty and stability benefits outlined in the ‘perfect shareholder’ exercise show why retail investors are worth the time, cost and effort to attract and retain.
Next, it helps to create a detailed, step-by-step plan for communicating with retail investors. Set goals and objectives for your strategy. Establish the right internal structure and budget. Decide which platforms help you reach the broadest audience of retail shareholders in the most cost-effective manner. Then you can implement your strategy and measure its success.
At MoneyShow, we can help with each step in the process. That’s because educating and empowering retail investors has been our company's primary mission for more than 40 years.
MoneyShow is the leading educator of affluent investors. We plan, organize and run dozens of in-person investment conferences and online virtual expos each year. More than 100,000 high-net-worth and highly engaged investors with an average portfolio size of $2.3 mn register to attend these events, with 97 percent of them reporting owning stock, 77 percent owning ETFs and 53 percent owning mutual funds.
These self-directed investors and traders are exactly the audience that’s becoming more important to every publicly traded company in the US. At our in-person conferences, you can meet and engage with these investors. Learn where they’re from, what they do and why they chose to buy your firm’s shares. You can tell them your company’s story, highlight notable corporate developments and otherwise educate and build loyalty. And you can choose to do so in a wide range of venues, from booths and workshops to keynote addresses.
Making connectionsAt our virtual expos, you can do it all from the comfort of your office. MoneyShow provides a back-end technology solution that makes the process of one-to-many IR communication hassle-free and highly effective. The time commitment is limited and the cost is reasonable – making your participation an easy sell to management.
In the end, retail investors have proven their worth to public companies – and are growing more important by the day. MoneyShow stands ready to help connect you with these ‘perfect’ shareholders.
MoneyShow’s mission is to help individuals ‘invest smarter, trade wiser’. Each year, the privately held financial media company hosts a series of in-person conferences and virtual expos that attract more than 100,000 investors, traders and financial advisers. They gather with top market experts from a wide range of disciplines in the US, Canada and online, seeking financial education and empowerment. MoneyShow is headquartered in Sarasota, Florida..
