Broadening the Shareholder Base of a Large-Cap Company

Client faced challenges in effectively engaging with large funds and investors in secondary and tertiary geographies

Despite being well-covered in research and active on the conference circuit, 67% of their meetings were with high-turnover hedge funds. Our client had limited exposure within large fund complexes and investors in secondary and tertiary geographies, which led to frustration among the IR team and C-suite. Our client also struggled to obtain investor feedback. They had a sense for where their messaging needed work, but no way to validate this independently aside from conducting a costly perception study.

Deploying a proactive investor outreach and engagement strategy

Rose & Company was engaged to build relationships with potential shareholders across geographies, enhance the conviction of existing shareholders, particularly large fund complexes, leverage C-suite time efficiently and implement a robust process for collecting, analyzing, and integrating investor feedback into corporate messaging. To accomplish this, our team leveraged our proven 4-step process:

Step 1: Qualification

We began by identifying and pre-qualifying a broader audience of potential investors using a new comp. group comprised of companies with similar business models and financial profiles. Our focus was on engaging with investors who may not typically be on the conference circuit, ensuring we covered secondary and tertiary geographies both in North America and international markets.

Step 2: Outreach

Our team of senior Wall Street professionals conducted direct outreach to a curated selection of prospective generalist shareholders outside of traditional sell-side channels. We established relationships with potential shareholders through targeted IR-only meetings and strategically deepened market penetration. We leveraged the C-suite for meetings with large fund complexes and institutions with significant purchasing power.

Step 3: Feedback

We provided our client with comprehensive feedback reports, highlighting investor sentiment and messaging considerations that were leveraging to continually refine communication and engagement strategies. Our reports also included directly-attributable feedback, investor prioritization, and recommended follow-up actions.

Step 4: Follow-Through

We implemented a structured follow-up process to keep prioritized investors informed about key developments and maintain sustained engagement. We established regular touch points and feedback loops, to help adapt strategies and address any concerns proactively.

Broadening the shareholder base and enhancing investor conviction

We curated an efficient non-deal roadshow schedule with decision makers at large, long-only institutions to maximize C-suite time, including a group lunch with a total of 14 investors, and back-to-back meetings with 6 other institutions with minimal downtime.

Our strategic approach led to significant results for the client, including a notable increase in engagement from large fund complexes. For example:

• Boston-based manager with $500 billion under management and avg. holding period of ~5 years grew to 11th largest shareholder with 11.4 million shares.
• NY-based investment manager with $2.5 trillion under management and avg. holding period of ~4 years became largest shareholder with 36.7 million shares.
• 29 mutual funds now own 10.4 million shares, up from 20 funds owning 3.1 million shares a year earlier.
• 48 mutual funds now own 22 million shares, up from 33 funds owning 15.7 million shares a year earlier.