VideoAnd a company's story needs to be backed up with facts and figures — the kind that an independent analyst would want in order to evaluate the stock. "Management needs to teach investors about what they do, and these metrics make it tangible," says Hutton (see "Numbers, Please" at the end of this article).
Finally, a company should make sure its story is told consistently in all of its communications, from press releases to its Website to teleconferences. Before any of this can happen, however, management must honestly appraise the business. "When a company is doing poorly, it's important for the CFO and CEO to assess the situation and be realistic about internal forecasts and budgets," says Tom Ryan, co-founder and co-CEO of ICR. "Companies must focus on financial performance and convey that performance in the most transparent manner possible."
Walk on the Buy Side
Because of the dearth of sell-side coverage, some IR firms are recommending that small-cap companies send their messages straight to the source: the buy-side investor.
"My perspective has always been that you should be approaching the folks that actually are making the investment decision with your story," says Pawlowski. Other target audiences include trade publications and other local and national media outlets, many of which are scoured by fund managers looking for investment ideas.
The drawback to the direct-to-the-buy-side approach is the amount of time it requires. "I am constantly on the road reaching out to people, rather than having them come to us," says Mac-Gray's Shea, who says he regularly calls and E-mails prospective investors, gathers names to add to the company's distribution list, and follows up with prospects whenever a press release goes out. "Where in the past we might speak to one analyst and that analyst's report would get read by a hundred people, now we are speaking to those hundred people ourselves."
For this reason, Ryan says he doesn't generally advise ICR's clients to target the buy-side on their own. "If you don't have the right internal tools to figure out whom to approach, then you're talking about a massive waste of money and time," he says. Adds co-founder and co-CEO Chad Jacobs, "This is why companies need to hire outside IR counsel."
In combing through the hundreds of potential investors to find those who would be the best fit, and in thus putting the management team's time to its best use, an IR firm may provide its greatest value. "We'll talk to anyone," says Graham's Hansen. "But as far as spending our time effectively, we rely heavily on [Pawlowski's] expertise and contacts to sort out who it is that we should be addressing to get the best return on our time and effort."
Shea says that thanks to Sharon Merrill, he spends only about 25 percent of his time on investor outreach. Without the IR firm's help, he estimates he could spend up to 75 percent of his time on the task. Indeed, one study by Princeton University economics professor Harrison Hong found that some CFOs were spending as much as 50 percent of their time on IR activities.
To achieve the coverage, liquidity, and stock-price appreciation documented by Miller and Bushee in their study, simply outsourcing investor relations to an outside firm is not enough, however. "It's a substantial time commitment if you want to do it right," says Miller. "When you talk to IR people, they'll tell you that management has to be ready to make this happen. It's not something you can do halfway."
Kate O'Sullivan is staff writer at CFO.
Numbers, Please
A critical part of selling a company's story to investors is backing up the initial, attention-getting information about its business strategy with the numbers that will drive any sophisticated investor's decision to buy the stock.
Amy Hutton, associate professor of business administration at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, advises companies to regularly disclose metrics that demonstrate the business's performance — metrics above and beyond the disclosure required by the Securities and Exchange Commission in quarterly and annual reports. "You can provide actual numbers that say a lot about the business that will hopefully affect analysts' forecasts," she says. By regularly releasing such numbers as monthly sales figures or an industry-specific metric such as backlog by product line (for manufacturing companies), the company creates an event that may garner press coverage, prompt follow-up calls from current stockholders, and provide a starting point for conversation with potential investors. "The companies they are going to invest in are the ones that make it easiest for them to find the numbers they need," says Deborah Pawlowski, CEO of Kei Advisors, a Buffalo-based IR firm.
Ron Hansen, CFO of Graham Corp., an industrial-equipment manufacturer in Batavia, New York, says the company has recently begun organizing conference calls and regularly announcing major orders. In addition, "the information that's being [provided] in our press releases is significantly more detailed from a financial perspective, and it's directed to what an analyst building a model needs to know," he says. The company also gives much more sales guidance than before, says Hansen. And the CFO now provides more detail about the industry's competitive dynamics, describing the company's sources of growth. "A person who wants to do the research can now dig a lot deeper into the underlying fundamentals of the business," says Hansen. — K.O'S.
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