With Wall Street putting public company boards and management teams in their cross hairs now more than ever, senior leaders at Alpha IR partnered with the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) to share our insights on the investor relations function, how to build a line of communication with IR, and the necessity of integrated communications during good times and bad.  The replay is still currently available for most at this LINK.

Over 200 public company board members joined our interactive session in mid-March in which attendees shared some encouraging and alarming perspectives.

• 90% of our board member attendees believe the IR function impacts valuation over the long term. Given the diverse backgrounds of boards today, we were highly encouraged to hear this.
• The provision of quantitative and qualitative guidance was a hot topic and nearly half the sample set said it is routinely discussed at the Board level. Additional questions centered on what types of KPIs are appropriate by market-cap, and how companies should backtrack on multi-year outlooks that were provided when the economy was more robust.
• Shockingly, only 39% of our group had an activist preparedness plan, but at least 77% had a recently updated crisis plan in place. The reality is that both of those numbers are too low and it is a Board’s duty to have an active knowledge of its activist vulnerabilities, as well as the basis of a preparedness plan and an established committee of internal and external partners like Alpha to quickly engage on any attack.

• Only 28% of our attendees felt they were “very engaged” in the IR function and nearly 40% said they had minimal to no engagement at all with IR.

• Board members were shocked to learn that for two out of every three companies, the internal IR function turns over every two years.

With the Alpha IR team’s combined 200+ years of investor relations and corporate reputation experience across market caps and industries, we know firsthand the necessity of open and honest dialogues between investor relations and a company’s board. IR professionals frequently cite that lack of communication as one of the core tenets in their decision to leave the company or IR profession, but this can be changed.

Hiring a smart coach and best practices partner like Alpha to guide the IR function can be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful investor relations program.  For most companies, five to 10 cents of long-term value in your stock price will pay for investing in an IR partnership, and we know a strategic and experienced approach will provide many multiples of that value over the long term.

Don’t let a failure to prepare with your IR team turn into a plan that fails both your Board and your shareholders. Thank you to the NACD for the opportunity to present.