Best Practice In IR – Developing a Winning IR Toolkit

It won’t be a surprise to anyone to learn that investor relations affects the valuation of a company. A survey by Rivel Research showed

– 75% of buy-side believe good IR affects valuation, and

– poor IR can result in up to a 20% discount.

Here are some tips for your IR team to consider to get you off to a strong start:-

1. Curate the available information carefully. With more and more data being available to investors, curating it effectively can greatly aid the investment decision. Layering information so that it’s easy for the investors to access, regardless of whether the investor wants to spend only 5 minutes (to get the key information quickly) or a couple of hours (without getting lost any rabbit holes).
2. Know what you are. Articulate your message clearly so that no investor can be in any doubt as to the investment case is.
3. Be real and accessible. In most cases, the investment process still starts with a personal contact. If they haven’t met your IR team and/ or management, there is a strong probability that you aren’t even on the fund manager’s radar.

What about the toolkit? There is nothing particularly complicated required to create an effective IR toolkit:-

• yourself, your phone and your voice
• company website, but you can supplement this with social media, working with your communications/ PR colleagues
• quantitative and qualitative investor targeting work
• technology will make your life easier, from CRM systems tailored to help IR, to free scheduling and project management apps. Even simple things like pre-designed meeting note templates will improve efficiency.

This year brings the 20th IR Society annual Best Practice in IR awards. As you set the team goals for 2020, why not consider entering? There are self entry categories which are judged by a panel, as well as voted awards. In addition to the honour and glory for winners, entrants generally see far wider benefits including internal recognition and it’s a great way to focus the team on what works and, importantly, what could potentially be improved.

Good luck!