Introduction to Investor Relations

there was an unwritten rule that said that if you had the choice between drafting the document or reviewing it, you always elected to draft the document. The reason for this was that in writing the document you could control what went in and what got left out. The hardest thing in reviewing a document is figuring out what’s not in the document that should be there. We always tend to focus on what’s said instead of what is not said.

if something is important enough to talk about when the news is good, it is also important enough to talk about when the news is less than good

every person that has to make or prepare a presentation should read Edward Tufte’s book, “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”

The presentations themselves generally run from 20 – 45 minutes in length and are usually designed to give a general overall view of the company.

as a general rule of thumb, a presentation will divide roughly into fourths: 1.) A general overview or update on the company and its positioning within the industry and its market, 2.) The status of current operating trends, 3.) Initiatives to drive future earnings, and 4.) Questions and Answers.

Take all of the above and add to it the fact that the investor relations officer is escorting senior management around to visit investors. That means that the IRO doesn’t get to talk, because investors are there to hear the senior member of management.

Perhaps the most famous examples of a chairman’s letter to shareholders are the annual missives written by Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway.

The first thing to realize is that there are several distinct sets of information that investors are looking for when they visit your site for share price information.

For press releases that announce non-routine matters items, the general rule of thumb in drafting the release is to write using the who, what, where, when and why format, with the information in the release laid out in declining order of importanc

perhaps the most important from an investor relations perspective is the letter to shareholders from the chairman