Managing Director, Brighthouse
Atlanta - BrightHouse
Key Takeaways
Attracting investors isn’t just about the numbers. To maximize investor interest, companies need to augment financial data with honest, compelling narratives about their value creation plans.
- Use powerful videos, graphics, design, and language to translate key drivers and metrics into clear and memorable terms that will intrigue investors.
- Understand what kinds of investors you’re seeking, and tune your communications to their needs and expectations.
- Plan investor days as part of a comprehensive communications program designed to instill confidence in your company’s management expertise and strategic sophistication.
What do investors want? They want to make money on their investments, of course. And to do so, they want to make sure companies productively allocate capital and create value. That requires proof points to demonstrate improving financial results. Just as important, it requires delivering data within a compelling story—one that brings meaning to the math and gives investors the confidence to invest with you.
What’s your company’s value creation story? Do you even have a story? If so, is it a strong one, transparently combining financial data with a clear and memorable connection to your company’s strategy and stakeholder impact?
Compelling, fact-based, believable stories that inspire should be at the heart of all communications with current and potential investors. The goal: to bring operational details to life and articulate a memorable account of everything from your company’s revenue growth and capital allocation plans to its impact on employees, communities, and the planet.
All too often, however, even companies that understand the importance of communication fail to present their investment case convincingly. Savvy investors have a keen ear for any efforts to hide uncomfortable truths behind flowery language and cherry-picked numbers. And even the strongest stories can lose their punch if not told with authenticity and a deep understanding of what the intended audience wants.
But putting it all together into a coherent narrative—a story arc revealing the company’s strategy as a plot that takes investors through each chapter of value creation—is no easy task. Here’s how to make it a bit easier.
Why Stories Work
Telling a great story is actually part of strategy—an expertly executed plan for connecting the dots from strategic plans and tactics to how they’ll create shareholder value as you deliver over time. Every communication with investors is an opportunity for CEOs and their teams to simplify organizational and operational models, reveal long-term product portfolio strategies, inspire with innovation and AI, discuss ESG plans, and make the financial math meaningful and easy to remember.
Not only must companies tell the value creation story, but they must do so in a way that investors will be able to recall and retell. Using elements like powerful videos, graphics, design, and language, you can translate key drivers and metrics into simple moments that are understandable and will keep investors talking.
To that end, balance is key. Every communication—from regular reports to inspiring investor day presentations—must walk the line between specific, objective current results and the more subjective, passionate display of confidence in the company’s prospects. Throughout all this, anecdotes must aggregate—rather than be exceptions.
Candor matters. Not every company’s story is entirely positive; organizations that have struggled to create value need to be willing to admit their mistakes, clearly describe how they’re correcting them, and, if possible, present encouraging results. Telling a credible story is essential if investors are to believe what they hear and come away convinced of the company’s prospects. (See the sidebar.)
Story Time
Companies looking to put their best foot forward in investor communications should keep in mind five critical success factors: align your leaders; understand your audience; share milestones and mistakes; create inspiring experiences; and simplify and repeat the message.
Chapter 1: Align Your Leaders
When developing a clear story that brings the financial details to life, coordination among top leaders is key. Shareholders are impressed when leadership teams—from the CEO to the heads of IT and HR—are in sync, displaying a consistent, coherent, aligned front.
Show off the talent involved in delivering on the strategy behind the story, and weave together how operations, technology, finance, product development, marketing, and sales leaders contribute to the plotline. And remember: we live in a truly open, transparent world, so make sure to align your messaging with other communications to avoid potential contradictions or gaps in the narrative.
Chapter 2: Understand Your Audience
Who is your natural investor? Obviously, if your company is focused on rapid growth in a risky industry, there’s little point in telling your story to managers of income-oriented portfolios. Every firm has a range of natural investors with a range of expectations in terms of growth, margin leverage, capital allocation, returns, and other factors and a preferred method of analyzing companies. The trick is to understand how your company authentically fits potential investors’ expectations.
Think about investor types as you would your customer base. Many investors are sector-focused. They know all the idiosyncrasies and the challenges of your industry, and they’ll likely expect a clear and detailed presentation of your company’s current financial status and prospects. Others may be generalist portfolio managers. For them, the story must be especially compelling and jargon-free if it is to stand out in a crowd of potential alternatives.
Understanding the kind of story your investors need to hear is critical—after all, they’re not just buying a stock, they’re buying a glimpse of what the future might bring.
Chapter 3: Share Milestones and Mistakes
Investors want to know details, to see the numbers and understand how they fit into their financial models. But they also need to know how the details fit into a larger narrative. When presenting investors with hard numbers, don’t neglect the human context. And don’t just offer testimonials and success stories: investors want a candid understanding of the challenges ahead, potential threats and how the company plans to overcome them.
Show your investors that even when you make mistakes, you’re willing to identify the issues, course correct, and convert the lessons learnedinto better results. Be sure to clarify what you can control and what you can’t. Investors realize that all companies face challenges that are out of their control—it’s just part of the industry cycle. But they want to see how you plan to mitigate risk and make the company stronger and more resilient. Don’t take credit for the cycle when times are good and blame the cycle when they aren’t. By connecting candidly, authentically, and confidently, you’re not just presenting facts, you’re building trust and loyalty.
Chapter 4: Create Inspiring Experiences
Among the best opportunities you’ll have to tell your story are investor days. Don’t think of these as standalone events, but rather as pivotal moments in a comprehensive communication plan designed to convey strategic insights through powerful storytelling and rigorous data.
Make sure you provide the right venue, a professional experience from the moment attendees arrive, and a well-rehearsed executive team. Prepare the team for face-to-face meetings and arm them with an understanding of who their investors are, where they come from, and what they care about. You want every point of contact, from the invitation and registration to the last “thank you,” to feel consistent and well thought out.
And don’t just teach to the top of the class. Speak to the generalist investor who may not know all the acronyms but is looking to learn how your business works, your company’s position within its industry, and how you create value. Take the opportunity to demystify the business proposition and frame its advantages in plain terms. This will significantly expand the pool of capital you can attract.
An engaging investor day is an opportunity to put in quality face time with your investors and tells them a lot about your command of details, depth of management expertise and commitment, and business process rigor—especially around how you make tough choices and tradeoffs. It’s a prime chance to demonstrate the confidence needed to convince investors that your company will create value for them.
Chapter 5: Simplify Ruthlessly, Repeat Relentlessly
Sometimes companies focus so much on a major investor day that they neglect the days that follow, when their target investors head back to their offices and share what they learned. Instead, think of this event as the beginning of your communication campaign, following up with materials that will reinforce your story.
Use the investors’ page on your website to post both visually appealing graphics showing your company’s financial status and projections as well as inspiring videos, testimonials, interviews, and quotes from investor day attendees. Continue to create regular communications promoting your company’s progress in light of the story you’ve been telling.
The goal: to establish loyalty and maintain a successful long-term relationship with investors.
The End
In today’s dynamic business environment, investor communications need to be more than a simple PowerPoint presentation of the numbers. They’re an opportunity to weave a memorable and compelling narrative—brought to life through multiple media—that captivates both the hearts and minds of investors. By coordinating leaders, understanding your investor audience, bringing the numbers to life through story, turning events into compelling experiences, and following up, companies can elevate all their investor communications, generating the confidence that builds patient ownership.
As we move forward in an era where connection, clarity, and transparency are paramount, these principles will be instrumental in fostering trust, understanding, and long-term positive relationships with the investment community.
Authors
Dan Riff
Senior Advisor
Boston
James Tucker
Managing Director & Senior Partner; Global Leader, Corporate Finance and Strategy Practice
Toronto
