Top tips for IROs

Here are my top tips for Investor Relations (IR) professionals to effectively tackle the challenges discussed at this year's Investor Relations Society Annual Conference.

Take a Global Approach: Need to adopt a global perspective in investor relations – this is a challenge but an opportunity. Engage with international investors and tailor communication to be relevant to a diverse audience, addressing their specific needs and interests.?

Top tip: When communicating with a fund manager running a global fund – to get into the talking points – you need to be selling UK market, sector and then your company within that context. (inspired by Sarah Moody, abdn)

Know your investor – How do they invest? What’s their time frame? Approach? Think about your investors and where your story fit in their portfolio. Existing shareholders want to know what’s going well what’s not. New shareholders want to know why you are great or what differentiates you from your peers. Think about where your story fits in their portfolio.

Top tip: Good question for IRO’s to ask themselves – if you were to IPO tomorrow, what would be special about you? What’s the motivation for management? What’s the five-year story? (inspired by Matt Hall, UBS)

Engage for Long-Term Investors: Build relationships with all investors by clearly outlining growth measures and demonstrating management's commitment to sustainable growth. Keep engaging, consistency and trust are key.

Top tip: Ensure that your CEO can stand up and say very clearly – ‘these are the three things that matter’. Cut through the noise with simplicity James

Build in a feedback loop. Engagement is hard, everyone is time poor, the consistent message was everyone is having to do more with less, bandwidth is limited. Nothing beats face time with management, so ensure you plan in advance, share key objectives and questions in advance and use your time wisely to build relationships.

Top tip – There is nothing better than just saying did you get everything you needed from that meeting? (inspired by Jean Roche, Schroders)

Be Consistent in Messaging: For me this is a golden rule with any stakeholder. But maintain regular and consistent communication with investors. Ensure that messaging aligns across all platforms. And is clear and transparent about the company’s business model, strategy, and performance.?

Top tip: investors don’t like it when companies change things, particularly numbers. So ensure that you check and use consistent metrics over time. (inspired by Bilquis Ahmed, JP Morgan)

Ensure ESG is integrated: Investors have always focused on the externalities that impact the long-term sustainability of companies; the challenge is often the categories. Emphasise your company’s commitment to governance and sustainability. Clearly communicate how these factors are integrated into the business strategy and operations.?

• Top Tip: Companies need to demonstrate how ESG is intertwined with the integrity of the business. (Inspired by Drew Gillanders, Citidel International Equities)

Tailor your Communications: Remember all investors are different – have different strategies, approaches and time horizons. Think about what information you can give investors to help them understand your business, especially retail investors.?

• Top tip: Simplify complex information and provide educational resources about your sector, your business to help them better understand your company’s performance and strategy. (Inspired by Louise Curran, Johnson Matthey)

Experiment with AI Tools: Huge opportunity to improve productivity and utilise AI for automating and summarising tasks such as reviewing documents and analysing sentiment. Models can generate content – but humans need to interrogate, curate and provide oversight for accurate and insightful results.?

• Top tip – investors might well be putting your reports, presentations through AI to distil key messages – so your run documents through AI to see what comes out and you understand what the model will spit out. And remember AI can’t yet read tables. (inspired by Jean Roche, Schroders)

Try different Engagement Techniques: Consider new methods of engagement such as deep dives, site visits, roundtables, meet the managers and interactive digital formats. Ensure these methods provide valuable insights into the business and its long-term strategy.?

• Top tip – Think about how people consume information. What can you do to give your investors a real sense of what’s going on with your business? (Inspired by Louise Curran, Johnson Matthey)

Experiment with Social Media: Utilise platforms like LinkedIn to communicate directly with investors, showcase the company’s culture, and provide updates on leadership and strategic initiatives. Social media can be an effective interim tool between formal communications.?

• Top tip: Linked in can be a nice additive tool in the interim between set pieces but be careful not to overdo it.??

Be Proactive about Media Relations: Develop strong relationships with journalists and use media effectively to shape the company’s narrative. Think about the social trends and economic environment to ensure key messages are communicated clearly and are of interest to stakeholders. There is value in regularity and consistency of messaging to the market.?

• Top tip – the first paragraph of any news story usually has nothing to do with the company – but links into the trends of the market – so ensure you tell your story in that context– (inspired by James?Melville-Ross, DGA)

Leverage your Annual Report: Yes, investors do read annual reports, and in fact use them as a core reference document. Ensure annual reports are easily accessible and easy to understand. Include detailed explanations of the business model, strategy, and performance metrics.

Top tip: Ensure you have your equity story condescended in your annual report, single source of the truth and give investors everything they need to know about your company (inspired by Jimmy Tillotson, Redwheel)