Talkin’ ABCs with IPOs

Hi boys and girls! Miss me? Took the family down to the beach for a little Spring Break action so I couldn’t chat with you last week. Sorry I didn’t give you a head’s up but I didn’t want to end up on this devilish Web site.

Anyhow… I’m back in the saddle again and talking a lot of “A-B-Cs” with IPOs. In fact, last Friday, I met with two different management teams that are taking their respective companies public. The companies could not be more different - one a household name, the other a small industrial. Yet, the conversations were frighteningly similar.

Both companies wanted to talk about what they could do now to get ready for life after going public. Both companies wanted to get a better understanding as to how much new responsibilities were going to fall on their existing finance and communications staff.  Both companies wanted to know if my colleague and I would actually work on their account or if we were the firm’s sales team (I suppose some firms still have professional sales teams. Frankly, I was surprised me to hear that question twice in the same day - guess my “presentation training” is paying off! LOL). Both companies wanted to know more about the role of their investment bankers after the offering. I think you get the point.

Where the conversations diverged was around the idea of IR as a marketing function AND a compliance function. Not surprisingly, the household name company understood that concept immediately (if not before the meeting even started). The industrial, on the other hand, was a bit skeptical and was much more focused on getting a compliant function in place quickly.

As we’ve discussed here before - both pieces are equally important to the investor relations function. The companies that win for their shareholders over the long term are those who realize that sooner than later.

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