Investor Relations

122INVESTOR RELATIONSMost standard presentations should be relatively short, with no morethan 35 slides. This usually results in the presentation not exceeding about45 minutes and being straight to the point.The outline should be shown to the audience with the name and titleof each speaker. The title of the different slides may be worded as messages(“Introduction” could become “XYZ, a global leader in food processing”),and the same syntax should be used throughout (you have eitherbullet points or full sentences, but not a mix of both). Appendices are thereto keep presentation short while assuring that thorough information is available.Slides in the appendices may also be used in response to questionsfrom the audience or to illustrate a complex issue.3.6.2.2 ContentThe presentation should combine strategy plans and progress, withoutforecasting numbers, unless they have been made public by way of a pressrelease. The presentation should take investors and analysts from the startto the finish of the projects, enabling them to track performance againstobjectives.Presentations are not to be wrapped up with a mere summary of the outlookfor the current or following year. On the contrary, if the presentationis to be dynamic and the Q&A session fruitful, the key messages should besummarized at the end, in the same way sales pitches or equity stories areconcluded. Impose your own conclusion.It is good to have a written script on hand, even if it is not used, becauseone or more speakers may need to be replaced at the last minute. It cannotbe emphasized enough that speeches should be rehearsed in full at leasttwo times in each language if this is what the plan is. It also makes it easierto assure professionalism during conference calls, because investors donot appreciate improvisation. The script should be compared to the pressrelease to assure that there are no inconsistencies and that the message is thesame in all languages, if applicable.Presentations should be updated as many times as necessary and adaptedto each audience and circumstance. Earnings presentations are only usefulon the day they are reported; by the time the roadshow is underway, thepresentation should have been reformatted to concentrate on key numbersand issues; new information may have been added because audiences willhave already seen the numbers. The presentations can be stored on the Website in an “archives” section.If you plan to hand out your presentation in a paper format, you needto know that investors seem to like smaller, A5-type size which they caneasily put in their pockets or next to their plate at luncheon presentations.Remember to allow for enough note-taking space.