Master Your Annual Investor Meeting or AGM

What makes a good private equity investor day? What makes an annual investor meeting sing? How do you make sure you investor day works for your investors? How can an investor day coach help you?

Meet the Author: Benjamin Ball

Ben is the founder of Benjamin Ball Associates and leads the presentation coaching and pitch deck creation teams. Formerly a corporate financier in the City of London, for 20+ years he’s helped businesses win with better pitches and presentations, particularly investor pitches. He is a regular speaker and a guest lecturer at Columbia Business School and UCL London.  Follow Ben on LinkedIn or visit the contact page. 

Why Is An Annual Investor Presentation Important?

For private equity funds, an annual investor meeting, AGM or investor day is important for investors and potential investors.

A well-run investor meeting will impress investors.  It can improve your reputation, positioning and likelihood of re-investing.  But a bad investor day can be a disaster – as it was for THG in 2021.

We’ve been helping PE management teams run outstanding annual general meetings for 15+ years. We do this for quoted companies and for private equity funds. We can help you too.

What Does a Good PE Annual Investor Meeting Look Like

When you ask investors to describe a good annual investor meeting, you hear words like: ‘interesting’, ‘useful’, ‘valuable’, ‘reassuring’, ‘insightful’, ‘helpful’, ‘inspiring’ and ‘fascinating’.

A great investor event can be transformational. You can turn around doubters, clarify uncertainties and help people understand what makes your firm special.

Based on 15+ years advising companies and funds with their Capital Market Days & investor meetings, and coaching for investor days our team at Benjamin Ball Associates have identified these investor meeting tips.

Improving Your Annual Investor Day

Let’s review each of this tips in turn:

1. Address investor concerns and issues

An investor day a great opportunity – and some companies have better investor days than others. But, what is the difference between a great investor presentation and an average one? We asked a range of investors and analysts what they want from an investor day.  Their answers were pretty consistent.

1. Do you demonstrate you understand your market?
2. Are you clear what makes you interesting to investors?
3. Are you transparent about recent performance?
4. Does it feel as if you are properly focused on the investor?
5. Does it all feel right?

Now look at these comments again. What I find fascinating is how much weight is put onto subjective rather than objective issues: on impressions rather than facts.

In all our work helping companies create better investor presentations, we spend most time helping people who know a huge amount about their business tell it in such a way that it makes it easy for their audience.

2. Teach, don’t tell

There is always a temptation to lecture investors – update them, inform them, tell them. Sometimes that’s appropriate, but too often that approach leads to dull presentations. Instead, have a teaching mindset.

You are the expert on your business. For others to continue to believe in you, you need to teach them about your business.  And by teaching them, you help them see the business as you want them to see it.

In this way, you can improve investor perceptions, feelings and confidence in your business. For example, use stories, examples, and case studies to bring your messages to life.

3. Help investors report back to their investment committee

Your investor will come to your meeting with a job to do:  report back. Most will need to write some sort of report – whether one line or 60 pages.

• Are you making it easy for them to write that report? 
• Is it clear what you are saying?
• Do you give them the words to use and the best ways to speak about your business at their investment committee?
• Have you used memorable metaphors and analogies?

If you make it easy to talk and write about you, you will get better understanding and stronger support.

4. Address investor concerns

This should be obvious, but it is often neglected. If investors have concerns, whether it’s about the market, competition, recent performance or unexpected news, you need to address this, proactively during the investor day.

It’s a mistake to avoid bad news. Much better to address it head on and anticipate it. 

And remember what you promised last year. The notes from your last investor day are the first thing that most investors will read before this event.

Why Pick Benjamin Ball Associates for Your AGM Coaching

At Benjamin Ball Associates, we’ve been coaching business people to improve their business communication skills for over 15 years.  Our coaching is fast and effective.  We work with individuals and with companies, one-to-one and in groups.  Call us today to learn more.

“I honestly thought it was the most valuable 3 hours I’ve spent with anyone in a long time.”

Mick May, CEO, Blue Sky

Our most popular training courses include:

• Presentation Coaching
• Public Speaking Coaching
• Investor Pitch Support and Coaching

Trusted by some of the most successful companies globally

Speak to Louise on +44 20 7018 0922 or email info@benjaminball.com to transform your speeches, pitches and presentations.

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5. Don’t assume knowledge

One big mistake is to assume that investors know your fund and firms as well as you do. Some will know a lot, but for others it could all be very new. You will do better if you start from the basics and remind them, quickly, what your firm does and what’s special about you. 

Using this approach you are giving your investors a reminder in your words, not their half-remembered interpretations.

For example, when presenting annual results we recommend the CEO remind shareholders and analysts about the company’s position.

For example: “Let me remind you, we are the market leader in X and Y, we are number 2 in Z and Q and we have been growing market share steadily for the last X years.” That way, investors now have a clear way of thinking about you.

6. Be interesting and memorable

To make something stand out and stick in the mind, you need to use the right tools. There’s a huge toolbox of techniques you can call on to give your investors something to take away and use to talk about you. 

One of the most memorable events we saw was a food producer running a capital markets day in London.  Their big innovation that year was a giant pizza that captured a big market share.  So they flew over some chefs and pizza ovens to feed all the analysts and investors with fresh pizza. Be unusual and memorable.

7. Improve impressions, don’t just supply data

An annual investor meeting is about so much more than facts. An old saying we use is “facts get forgotten, stories get repeated”. That is because facts are meaningless without a story to describe them. 

For example, 14, 35, 34, 16, 57, 41 are meaningless numbers.  But with an explanation such as ‘the combination to the safe’ or ‘next week’s winning numbers’ or ‘the grid reference for the pot of gold’ they instantly have meaning.

One of the first questions we ask our clients is: “describe the impression you want to leave with investors”.  Very often the senior team has not thought about this so we need to help them find the right idea. 

But once you know what you want to achieve with investors, it’s much easier to find the messages, the stories, the theme of the day. From this solid base you can develop your individual presentations and show how they link into the main story. Tell a story; don’t dump data.

8. Make the whole investor event enjoyable

The BBC’s old moto is to ‘Inform, educate and entertain’. You should aim to do the same in your investor days. Investors will remember you better if they have had an enjoyable experience.

You can achieve this in a number of ways – for example the obvious: making interesting and relevant presentations, all delivered well. But you can also plan your event to be inspiring and enjoyable. 

For example, are you giving investors a chance to meet the wider management team?  Are you showing them something new and exciting? And for today’s virtual settings it means rethinking how you run your event.

Even if you are just doing an earnings call, what can you say to make your call stand out? Presentations will be shorter, what you say will be bigger and bolder, and you will need to fight harder to keep attention.

If they enjoy themselves, you will improve perceptions.

9. Plan your event carefully 

1. Have a clear theme for the day
2. Structure the investor day so it gets more and more interesting as the day progresses
3. Use video to help tell some of the more complex and remote stories
4. Choose and train speakers so they come across as engaging and interesting
5. Fully rehearse all the hardest parts of the event so that it runs smoothly and without a hitch.

10. Test your investor day against this checklist

• Do you have a clear investment story?
• Is there a red thread story throughout the day?
• Do you appeal to hearts as much as to minds?
• Have you simplified visual aids
• Do presenters to think beyond PowerPoint?
• Have you polished presenting skills?

For example, it’s amazing how much difference a clear story can deliver. We helped a a $1bn Finnish company a few years ago  prepare for their Capital Markets Day. With our help they saw a 10% uplift in their share price – despite no new news. It was the same information they had presented before, but structured clearly and presented persuasively.

And for some Private Equity firms, creating better investor days with clear messages makes the subsequent fundraising much easier.

So, next time you have an investor event, spend time to prepare and simplify your story and then make sure everyone who speaks is  confident and engaging.

How We Can Help Improve Your Annual Investor Meeting

Call us to help you prepare and rehearse your private equity investor day. When we advise – public companies and private funds – on investor days, Capital Market Days and AGMs, support needed varies from rehearsing the speakers with public speaking coaching to helping think through the whole event from beginning to end.  We categorise our support in three areas:

1. Messaging – help you decide what you want to say
2. Materials – support you in preparing compelling presentations
3. Rehearsals – to refine your delivery and performance
   

Next Steps To Improve Your Investor Meeting

Call us to discuss how we can help you run a memorable investor day, AGM or CMD. We’ll coach your team so that your investors feel happy, confident and excited about your future.

Call Louise Angus, our client services director today on +44 20 7018 0922 or fill in the form below.

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Why Choose Us:
Transform your pitches and presentations with tailored coaching

We can help you present brilliantly. Thousands of people have benefitted from our tailored in-house coaching and advice – and we can help you too.

“I honestly thought it was the most valuable 3 hours I’ve spent with anyone in a long time.”

Mick May, CEO, Blue Sky

For 15+ years we’ve been the trusted choice for leading businesses and executives throughout the UK, Europe and the Middle East. We’ll help you improve corporate presentations through presentation coaching, public speaking training and expert advice on pitching to investors.

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Unlock your full potential and take your presentations to the next level.

Speak to Louise on +44 20 7018 0922 or email info@benjaminball.com to transform your speeches, pitches and presentations.

Speak to an expert. Get a free consultation