SALONI SURI, Shareholder Analytics and Investor Relations
An important task within a company’s Investor Relations function is identifying new investors who could become potential shareholders. An analysis of a company’s share register will give an Investor Relations Officer, (IRO), a good snapshot of who their current shareholders are at a single point in time but the composition of a share register is continually evolving. Good IRO’s are constantly seeking to engage with potential new investors to help bring them up to speed on the company. Only a small proportion, however, of the hundreds of thousands of funds will have the right profile and investment style to match the investment proposition being promoted by a particular IRO, meaning effective investor targeting matters.
AccessIR
FIRST Advisers has a number of tools and the expertise to help IROs generate the best return from investor targeting. At the heart of our Investor Targeting offer is AccessIR, our proprietary, leading edge IR platform. IROs can use the powerful, global database that underpins AccessIR to conduct desktop targeting to identify the right fund managers, in the right regions with the right investment styles generating a shortlist of potential investors. This list can then be refined further through research and direct email with the fund managers. By providing IROs with the ability to interrogate AccessIR, FIRST Advisers helps save time and money by avoiding the pursuit of fund managers that are not a good fit and wasting time on meetings that will not be productive.
RORI analysis
AccessIR is also integral to FIRST Advisers’ Register of Relevant Interests (RORI) analysis work that provides valuable intelligence on peer company beneficial owners that can significantly improve the effectiveness of investor targeting. A RORI is a compilation of all disclosures made by registered shareholders or nominees in response to disclosure requests issued by a company or its agent. On the face of it, these disclosure notices can be hard to understand, dense and difficult to extract insights from. FIRST Advisers’ experienced investor analytics team uses the AccessIR platform to capture and process the disclosure notice data, which is then analysed to build a comprehensive, validated list of new investor targets for IROs to approach.
The FIRST Advisers analysts conduct RORI analysis on a regular basis as part of ongoing investor relations work and during transactions. We can identify institutions that invest in a company’s peers or sector, both domestic and offshore. The target investor report is available via AccessIR and populated with high quality targets that have already identified their interest in a sector through their investment in a peer company. Analysis of peer group RORIs offers highly effective investor targeting that can help with discovering institutions or funds that do not appear in commonly used data sourced from public filings, which are typically out of date by a minimum of 3-6 months. The resulting information is significantly more accurate and comprehensive and can be utilised to refine investor relations and capital market strategies.
Doing investor targeting the right way, from the start, not only improves the productivity of the investor relations team but also avoids the risk of alienating potential investors by making your pitch to the wrong people.