InspIR Insights: What’s Keeping the C-Suite and IROs Awake at Night Key Takeaways
InspIR Group and BNY Mellon were pleased to welcome leaders in the Mexican Investor Relations community to a fun and interactive roundtable discussion on Wednesday, September 27, 2023 in Mexico City. Over the course of the evening, the group moved between three topical tables: «Storytelling in Today’s Thorny Investor Landscape», «Connecting with Investors – Not One-Size-Fits-All» and «Measuring and Validating a Successful Investor Engagement Strategy: Evaluating KPIs».
We shared experiences, best practices, and new learnings while also strengthening the local IR network. Some of the key takeaways included:
Storytelling:
– When messaging around a global event, earnings materials of global peers and others reporting earlier in the cycle can provide useful tone, context and areas of investor focus
– Linking discussions of ESG strategy to culture and business strategy is becoming increasingly important
– As ESG communications continue to expand, investors and analysts are looking for consistent, easy-to-find metrics
– Investors are increasingly using AI tools to gauge sentiment on earnings calls and seek out new opportunities
Not one Size Fits All:
– Smaller IR teams with more limited budgets typically rely on banks to enable outreach
– Teams that are not able to do independent investor outreach are frustrated that they’re unable to better manage their NDR meetings to ensure the best fit for their time and positioning
– While virtual outreach proved to be invaluable during the pandemic, and continued to broaden investor access post-pandemic, there is an intrinsic value to in-person meetings
– IR teams are informing their Boards of IR activities
KPIs:
– There is an opportunity for IR Departments to further institutionalize and establish KPIs that can help management measure the effectiveness and return on the investments made in investor relations
– Outcome-based KPIs include: investor and analyst feedback, sell-side replication of messaging in research reports, meeting targeted changes in the shareholder base, meeting quality feedback, management and board feedback, investor meeting conversion to shareholder, keeping a narrow band in the consensus, among others
– Activity-based metrics include: number of investor meetings, invitations to attend the most desired conferences, sell-side interactions, management feedback, website hits, and meeting the IR budget
– Finally, while share price and valuation related KPIs are easy to monitor, all agreed these are not ideal metrics as they are impacted by overall market and business conditions and cannot be controlled by IR
