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Company-hosted Investor Days
Company-hosted investor days are a key event on any IRO's calendar. These scripted conferences comprised of management presentations, demos and plant tours, guest speakers, receptions, dinners and lunches are a major undertaking. As part of their communications strategy to take their story directly to investors, many companies include these events in their investor outreach programs
If you are considering hosting an investor day, take a look at the answers to the eight most frequently asked questions we receive from companies considering hosting their own event.
1) Why Should I Host An Investor Day?
Investor days provide real benefits for both the companies that host them and attendees. First, they are a cost-effective and time-efficient means to get the company's message to a large audience simultaneously and to build relationships that make for long-term shareholders. They provide an excellent forum for providing in-depth information about your business strategy, key competitive advantages and opportunities. They enable you to demonstrate new products, services and processes. And, they enable the entire management team to gain first-hand knowledge of what investors want to know.
At the same time, these events are popular with attendees because they provide the opportunity for investors to meet and talk to your broader management team and to accomplish a great deal of due diligence in a single day.
An effective conference will go a long way to helping attendees develop a better understanding of your strategy and competitive positioning and answer that proverbial question as to why they should invest in or cover your company.
2) Exactly What Does An Investor Day Entail?
Investor days require the coordination of many parties including senior management, attendees and both internal and outside resources. Tasks can be broken into five main categories: (1) targeting of attendees, (2) event planning, (3) travel, (4) presentation development, and (5) on-site event management.
3) How Often Should I Hold An Investor Day?
Unless you are a mega cap, you will want to hold a conference every year to two years to keep your investor base up to date on your company. Coordinating it with a product introduction, following a big merger or other significant event helps to draw a larger audience.
4) Who Should I Invite and How Many People Should I Expect?
Invite analysts, sell-side and independent, that cover you and that you would like to cover you, current institutional investors and those who are in your wide universe of targets. If you have a retail following invite key brokers. The more the better as many will not attend - keep in mind that in today's age of webcasting, about half your audience will opt to view your conference from their office either due to scheduling conflicts or because it is more efficient when they can eliminate travel. Gauging the number that will attend is always tricky. A snowstorm, sudden announcement by a competitor, or other unforeseen event can impact attendance. And you will inevitably have last minute dropouts. Generally speaking, most small and mid caps can draw a live audience of 20 to 30 people. Larger caps and companies in the news will be able to attract a higher turnout.
5) How Long Should the Presentation Portion Be?
That depends. How much interest is there in your story? Did guests travel to your facility or are you hosting in a major financial center? Is this your first or your 20th conference? Determining the length of a conference is always a balancing act where we weigh the amount of time we are asking attendees to devote and the amount of detail we want to provide. A general rule of thumb is, shorter is better.
6) Should I Include Videos, Demos or Guest Speakers?
Videos, product demonstrations and guest speakers can be an excellent addition to a conference. Video is a great means to give attendees an overview of an off-site facility, to help them get a handle on a new technology or process or to provide a testimonial. Live demonstrations, while a bit riskier, can help to create excitement about a new product. And guest speakers who are experts in their field, or from a respected company, can be a draw, particularly for smaller caps.
In a longer conference these elements can provide a welcome change of pace for the audience. The key to remember is that the main focus of the day needs to be on your team, and before adding any of these elements we want to ask how they contribute to our messaging objectives.
7) When Should I Begin Planning?
Because investor days require the participation and coordination of a large number of players, the farther in advance that you begin planning the better. Ideally your first planning meeting will get underway four months prior to the event, however, with a little less sleep, we have helped companies pull off successful conferences in less than half that time. If you are considering hosting a conference in New York during the busy fall season, its best to allow five months and a bit of flexibility in the dates, especially if you have your heart set on a certain venue.
8) How Can I Make My Event A Success?
The key to making certain that your event is a success is to define and prioritize your objectives and what "success" will mean for your company. Is your goal to gain a wider audience or to provide a progress update to investors? Do you need to change prevailing perceptions or has there been a recent significant event such as a merger, regulatory development, research breakthrough or new product introduction that you want to draw attention to? Your objectives will determine how your event should be structured in terms of when and where it will be held, its length and the speaker roster.
Contact us to learn more about Financial Roadshow's Analyst Day Services and how we can make your day more successful.
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