What was your experience dealing with Investor Relations?

I had started my new role at a new company a few weeks ago and I enjoyed some of the detailed learning which I've never really encountered in my previous work experience. Sadly, one of our portfolio analyst is resigning and due to the small organizational structure of the company the CEO had asked me to take over his role as an investor relations.



The Scope of Investor Relation?

So what is exactly the role of an investor relations?

Here are some of the main purpose why an investor relations department is set up in a company:


  • Bridging communication between the investment community and management
  • Providing feedback amongst Internal communication
  • Liaise with external parties (existing/potential shareholders, analysts, media) to provide value creation by adopting an open and transparency approach. 


    • In the past, I've always wanted to try out the investor relations role one way or another, thinking what they did was fun and easy. That was until his handover to me last week. The investor relations role can be quite tough and grumpy. Not only I had to deal with various regulatory SGX and MAS compliance, but I also went through the list of questions that some of the investors had asked and it can be range from pretty irrelevant to really daunting types of questions. 

    For example, some of the easier questions I saw in the email was "What does the company do?" Or, "Where can I find the annual report of the company?"

    Some of the harder questions include questions relating to very specific details such as the tenure of the specific loan or the hedging interest rates or the incumbent use of the SPCs, etc. The thing about answering these type of questions is not only do you need to understand the background of the specific operations well but also to go through the CEO for approval before replying - this can be pretty tiring since there are tons of questions in the mailbox :(

    Dealing with an investor relation can be pretty rewarding at times. By liaising with them directly, you can gain insightful information which you might have missed when you are researching otherwise. Having said that, the information gathered must not be something that has not been publicly disclosed. So it can be hard to draw the lines at times.

    So the next time you see those quarterly presentations on the SGX website and replies from your company's investor relation, do appreciate what they do. It is not as easy a job as I thought it would be.


    What was your experience with an investor relation? Please share.


     
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