How to target better

investors for your

company
A checklist for IR teams looking to enhance their
investor targeting efforts

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Acquiring new investors is one of the most critical strategic endeavours for
investor relations departments. Your management, with the support from the
IR team, should spend time understanding what kind of investors your
company wants to have - defining a target investor profile that can guide you
in your targeting efforts. You could compare your shareholder base with that
of your peers to understand gaps or under-represented areas, as well as
identify individual institutions (and the right contacts within those institutions)
that hold the shares of your peers to help to build out that profile.

One mistake companies often make is taking a “spray and pray” approach to
investor relations, casting an extremely wide net and meeting with investors
of every shape and size. While having lots of meetings can feel productive, it
can also be a massive waste of time. Defining an “Ideal Investor Profile” can
help to focus your targeting and marketing efforts to ensure the highest
chances of converting investor meetings into shareholders.

According to a recent Buy-Side survey conducted by Irwin, 89.5% of buy-

side investors think that issuers do not do enough due diligence in
understanding who they are or what they’re looking for before meeting
with them. Having a strong targeting strategy will allow you to better craft
and tailor your story for prospective investors.

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Before creating your target list
Here are some key things you should consider before creating your target list:

Who are our existing shareholders?

What is our strategy for how to assess investor gaps and identifying potential opportunities
for targeting?

How do we build a balanced shareholder base in terms of concentration, geographies,

investment style, retail/institutional split, etc?

Should we prioritize our existing shareholders in terms of communication and outreach?

And/or target key underweights/non0shareholders?

Define a target investor profile that can guide you in your

targeting efforts

Understand if you want to include debt investors in your

outreach Did you know?

Review your historical outreach activities to see: Irwin automates the ordering
and processing of NOBO lists,
Who have you engaged with already? and uses machine learning to cleanse,
parse, and integrate the list with the rest
What were the results of those meetings?
of your shareholder data. Interested in
Do you want to focus on a new member of the learning more?
management team or IR team to introduce to the market?

Do you want to target within your existing base, and look

for growth opportunities with existing investors? It’s 9x Request a demo >
easier to get a current shareholder to buy more stock
than to acquire a new shareholder.

Take a look at your NOBO (non-objecting beneficial

owners), which allows you to access insight into your non-reported shareholder base
(family offices, retail investors, some hedge funds). This can represent 20-80% of a total
shareholder base, depending on the size of a company.

Is your pitch well defined? How will you customize it for investors? (Check out this blog post on
cold emailing investors)

Establish a plan to track activity and progress

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Building your target list
Here are the elements you want to look at when creating your investor targeting list:

Investor location - what geography are they located in? Do you want to look at investors only
located in certain countries, states, provinces, or cities?

What type of organizations would you like to include in your list? Some options, for example, are
family offices, hedge funds, retail investment advisors, banks, investment managers, private banks,
pension funds, etc.

Securities they hold - do you want to look at only investors that hold your peers, but don’t have a
position in your stock?

Equity assets under management - for example, do you only want to look at investors that manage
at least $100M in equity management?

Investor turnover - Depending on your goals, you may want to look at investors with very low
turnover, for example.

Investor geographic ownership - to expand your horizons, you might want to look at investors who
invest in (vs who are located in) securities domiciled in a particular country.

Market cap ownership - depending on the market cap of your company, you may want to search for
investors who invest in securities with a similar market cap to yours.

Investor style - do you want investors who invest for aggressive growth? ESG? Deep value?
Determine what style of investor is the best fit for your company.

Investors who invest in your sector, and sub-sector.

Do they have a history of activism? You may want to exclude activist investors from your target list.

Once you have considered all of the above elements, you should be able to develop a similar statement
(with the criteria that are most relevant to your company):

“My target investor list is made up of investors who:

• Are located in the united states • Hold my peers, but do not have a position in
my stock
• Are either family offices, hedge funds, or
investment managers • Manage at least $100M

• Invest in large-cap technology, computer • Have low turnover

communications companies in Canada
• Have an ESG style of investing

• Do not have a history of activism”

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Investor targeting with a platform vs without a platform

With a platform Without a platform

Holdings data - Algorithm and scoring - Broad-based approach: Search
methodology to identify the best SEC’s 13F public filings using
investors for your company. Edgar.

- Pull target lists of thousands of - Peer holdings by institution.

investors based on a very
specific criteria. - Google, company websites,
LinkedIn.

People data - Algorithms to identify the right - Manually searching through

contacts at a firm based on fund prospective documents,
information on their role, company websites, press
holdings, and managed funds. releases, LinkedIn.

- Phone numbers, emails. - ZoomInfo (or similar tool) to

find contact information.
- Coverage details and holdings
data

Pros - Up-to-date and accurate - Budget friendly

- Time savings

- Quantifiable ROI
Cons - Cost associated with platform - Time insensitive

- Out-of-date

Download The Step-By-Step Guide to Choosing

Investor Relations Software

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The Irwin Solution

Irwin enables leading organizations to

manage their investor relations
programs with a modern, easy-to-use,
integrated product, differentiated and
comprehensive investor and
shareholder data, a commitment to
Interested in learning
service excellence, and a powerful and
how Irwin can help your
versatile suite of investor relations company?
tools.
Schedule a demo with one of our
Irwin representatives to see how you
can enable your IR team.

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