Category: Debt IR

Posted on

Sneaky ways to boost your public speaking skills

Clients often come to me looking to work on their investor messaging. That can be written or verbal. Public speaking has always been a mix of voice and body language. With the current reliance on Zoom style meetings, I reckon the verbal aspects are currently more important – I mean, isn’t everyone wearing shorts with their work shirts since you can’t be seen? Luckily, there are so many ways you can practice, and since we’re at home, nobody will ever know.

The elevator pitch

The “elevator pitch” is the 30 second spiel you have ready for when someone asks “so what do you do,” or “why should I invest,” or whatever the burning question is. The theory is, you only have 30 seconds to grab their attention before the lift arrives at their floor, or in real life, before their mind wanders. No matter how strong the story is, you have to have a catchy soundbite. There are three steps to nailing this

1. Write it down, as it would be spoken

This is an absolute must. In speech, we tend to use very short sentences – say 8 words. Force yourself to write in a way that sounds natural.

2. Record yourself reading it

Any voice recording app will work here. Now listen back. Is it clear? Does it sound clunky?

3. Test on an audience

If you can, try to persuade a non-specialist to listen to it, ie someone who will call you out for any technical/ complex stuff that might have snuck in. Family members give better feedback than the dog (although the dog will probably feign interest more convincingly).

Bigger events

1. Practice

When I work with CEOs, we always do a practice auditorium speech in front of a room of advisors and colleagues. That’s not feasible for everyone, but we can generate a fake audience. It’s definitely worth checking out the VirtualSpeech app – you’re going to need a VR headset, but it’s so worth it. If you’re a bit of a geeky perfectionist like me, the analysis is going to blow your mind.

feature_meeting_analysis

2. Get a good night’s sleep

Even if nobody can see your wobbly legs and there are no handshakes to give away your sweaty palms, a spot of meditation will calm those nerves. There are loads of meditation and guided sleep apps, and it’s such a personal matter, that you’ll just have to browse the App Store yourself, but they’ve come a long way from the whale music. Bedtime stories, hypnotherapy sessions ….

3. Teleprompter like a pro!

This was a recent revelation to me. Before you get too excited, I’m going to stress that I never recommend reading a verbatim script, but if you insist, make sure you write if for speech (check those sentence lengths). Or use it for speaker notes instead of index cards. There are apps which will give you prompts on your phone.  Currently, PromptSmart seems the most established, but there are new ones being released. One final plea if you’re going to use these, watch where your eyes are on the camera!

4. Uhm blaster

OK, this is fun! How often do you think you use “like” or “uhh” … There are game-style apps that will call you out on these. Try the LikeSo app – let me know how addicted you get! It’s like CandyCrush.

I hope that helps, but if you’d like to work with me on your investor presentations, do get in touch.

Posted on

Five reasons why you should focus on debt IR

This article was first published in ReachX.

Debt is a critical source of company funding, and the benefits of an effective debt investor relations (IR) programme are increasingly being recognised. Debt investors are an important community, as well as being an engaged and receptive audience.

Companies who engage with debt investors regularly, and not just during issuance, demonstrate best practice, plus good debt IR could potentially help reduce the cost of issuing debt, increase the demand, and have a positive impact on the company reputation and even the equity share price. Taking a proactive approach to debt investor relations is not difficult, but it does differ from equity IR in several key aspects.

The amount of time to be invested in a programme of meetings will need to be agreed between the Treasurer, IR, CFO, and others if appropriate. It will depend, amongst other things, on the complexities of the story and whether you are, or plan to be, a frequent issuer as there is a cost-benefit analysis to consider.

The first challenge with debt IR is to identify who your debt investors actually are. Unfortunately, there is no share register like there is for the ordinary shares. With a new issue you will know the initial allocations, but as soon as trading commences this quickly becomes out of date with a large proportion often being traded in the first few days. The only solution to this dilemma is regular communication with the market and developing a relationship where debt investors will let you know (even if only roughly) what their current holding is.

Once you are engaging with debt investors, you can start to build an effective communications plan. In terms of activities, this would look very similar to a typical equity IR programme, including roadshows and events. These would be aimed at existing holders as well as potential new investors. There is an added benefit that when you do come to market with a new issue, many of the potential investors will already understand the strategy and investment case. This can then facilitate their investment decision.

Another difference to equity IR is the focus of the investors. Of course they will still want to hear about the group strategy, but they will also have additional questions which are more balance sheet focused, and an interest in the specific terms of any instrument. Andy Mead, former Treasurer and IR Director at National Grid, says “80% of questions in a debt investor meeting will be identical to in an equity meeting, but you need to be prepared for the remaining 20%.”

This leads us on to the question of disclosure. Clear, useful, and relevant information should be available for debt investors, just as it is provided to help equity investors. Yet the quantity and quality of debt information published by FTSE 100 companies still varies significantly, with much information directed primarily at equity investors.

In fact, many of the routine debt questions, the questions that make up the 20% that Andy Mead referred to above, can be addressed through simple disclosure. For example, presenting information on debt maturity profiles, gearing, pricing, terms, holding structures, etc.

One final thought to leave you with; as with equity IR, work done when times are good, will stand you in good stead in the event of more challenging times.

The actions outlined above are an excellent place to start building your debt IR capabilities from. If you would like to go deeper, IR-connect offers advice to companies looking to evaluate and expand their debt investor engagement.