Investor Relations

12INVESTOR RELATIONSIPOCreation, production, management of all Investor Relationsdocuments: slideshow, financial advertising, pressrelease, Website, etc.Roadshow planning and logisticsTargeted dissemination: shareholders, financial analysts,institutional investors, and journalistsReal-time analysis of investor and analyst meetings, andcontinuous improvement of messagesPhase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4Figure 1.5 The IPO (Phase 2)“equity story.” This helps determine the stock’s future positioning on themarket and is critical in more ways than one: It forces managers to explain,in words and numbers, the strategy that will subsequently be presentedto the public in company documents. The main goal is to come up withan equity story that will appeal to the investors to whom the investmentbanks will be marketing the shares. Conflicting interests can be a seriousissue during this stage: Shareholders will want to see the highest possiblevaluation while investment banks will want to assure that the IPO is successful,hence potentially sell it off at an initially lower price. Needless tosay, it can also be the other way around. This is going to impact the size ofthe “free float” (the portion of the share capital that will be actually tradablein the public) and share price once the shares are listed. Therefore,managers must pay special attention to how they define their strategic messages,describe their growth prospects, and set their objectives. This phasewould not be complete without real “dress rehearsals” in every language inwhich information meetings or private meetings will be held. These “dryruns” should include intensive Q&A sessions. You can already start gettingready to respond to some of these most frequently asked questionsin these instances: “Does your company have a profitable track record?What makes you confident that you will be able to maintain strong salesand earnings growth in the future? What are your key competitive differentiators?”These rehearsals can also help determine which executives oroperating officers will be presenting to the investment community, basedon not only their position within the organization, but also on their speechand communication skills in any given language. In most cases, it is usefulto bring in a media trainer and speech coach. Defining the guidance policy for strategic objectives and financialtargets. This will be an area of maximum attention, internally andexternally, a far-reaching one that will influence a new issuer’s disclosurepolicy, its relationships with analysts and investors, and its public company