HOW INVESTOR RELATIONS CAN ADD VALUE TO INVESTORS AND MANAGEMENT

HOW INVESTOR RELATIONS CAN ADD VALUE TO INVESTORS AND MANAGEMENT

With my preceding article on the importance of investor Relations (IR), I have touched on the IR roles, function and benefits. The nature of its work is more inclined to communicate with media as well as for financial analysis.

There are  many changes which, have taken place everywhere and the capital market is in no exception at all. This may be viewed as a great wonderful opportunity as it can add value to both management and investors.

Today, I am going to touch on some of the effective strategic initiatives which may be embarked by this unit, which I have laid down, in bullets point, for easy reference and understanding as appended below:-

a) Need to educate and inform investors regularly about the industry trends, material and significant things they should know and be aware of the business environment in which the company's operates. Understand how your industry is viewed. In this connection, you also need to select and analyse a peer group. 

b) Sets strategy to monitor what drives value in your stock and how your company fares on those matrix. 

c) Determines and assess how future initiatives affect long term shareholder value.

e) Targets investors effectively. In this sense, you need to know who is really going to influence the value of your company's stock as lead steers.

f) Monitors what drives value from the investors' perspective and constantly provide investors' insights and their decision making criteria to management and the board of Directors. In this context, you may gather insights from a representative samples of investors, gathering information among a few of the loudest and frequently heard investors that can caused the company to go down to the wrong path.

g) Needs to become part of the company's strategic planning team, which lead the future of your company. As such, you need to sit at the table with the key management teams to discuss and draw out the strategies of how you are going to communicate internally and externally. These alliances are crucial so as to ensure that everyone is speaking with one voice.

As such, trust you can see clearly how important that this unit  stay proactive and interactive with investment communities so as to give them a sense of comfort, besides arming with the necessary skills and knowledge  which may be market sensitive information. To build for the  long haul and in a transparent manner, all information released need to be consistent with its story line so as to earn a high integrity for the company. It is critically importance to earn the investors' confidence. Bear in mind, the company cannot avoid competing for investors both locally and internationally.

As the whole country, cannot avoid competing for international investors with other countries, so if you don't play this segment well, Malaysian companies will lose out.

That's all and seeing you again for another useful article on IR.

James Oh

Skype me at james.oh18