Answering the conference call

Regardless of the industry you work or invest in, there are always a number of investor conferences throughout the year where you can get the latest information and network to your heart’s content, Cannings Purple Director Andre Rowell discusses how to choose the one for you.

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For some industries like mining, the sheer number of conferences is huge and offers a conundrum – which ones to attend and which ones to forgo.

For both corporates and investors alike, the opportunity for one key presentation or meeting may change your fortunes. Many a company and investor can relate to the one chance opportunity that led to riches.

So, which are the conferences to attend and which ones to give a miss? After all, time and money are scarce and you can’t be at all of them (Note: if you’re a corporate trying to be at all of them – don’t, go back to the office occasionally and build the company instead).

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In the first instance, both investors and corporates need to ask themselves a simple question – is this conference targeted towards my company or investment outlook? As a billion-dollar company, you are probably wasting your time if the conference is targeted towards those with a market cap under $100 million. Similarly, if you are an investor looking for stability and yield, conferences featuring speculative stocks are probably not the right use of your time.

Once you’ve whittled down the list, consider what it is that you want to get out of the conference.
For corporates, it may be an opportunity to raise new equity or promote a new acquisition. Just going for the sake of going without anything new or meaningful to say is likely to result in investors taking less notice of you in the conference follow-ups.

For investors looking for a new investment opportunity, pre-conference research is essential to determine whether the presenters have what you are after. It also allows you to better plan your conference to be in the plenary session at key times.

Lastly, conferences are evolving in their structure, offering new potential for both investors and corporates. While the big-shop conferences with large plenary sessions and exhibition booths still dominate, a new breed of structured one-to-one meetings between investors and corporates in a conference-like setting is changing the game (for the better).

Conferences will continue to be a popular forum for investors and corporates to come together and network under a common umbrella. How each of these groups profits from the experience will depend on how well they prepare from the outset.

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