Our Blog: The Podium

For months leading up to your S-1 filing, you probably have been singularly focused on creating that massive tome. You have spent significantly more time with your lawyers and auditors than with your own family -- and you cannot even begin to imagine a time when you won’t be spending every waking moment with your bankers. So now that you’ve left the long nights (and great food spreads) at the financial printers behind, it’s time to focus on investor relations. You need to hit the ground running with IR as soon as your company prices its offering, so here are 10 “to do” items before then:

1) Develop your IR website. The IR website must be ready to go live on the day of your IPO pricing. It is most cost-effective to hire an IR website hosting provider, which will develop your site and aggregate content such as news releases, SEC filings and stock data. You also need to prepare additional content for your site such as “Frequently asked Questions,” management biographies and fact sheets. Your website is arguably the most important vehicle you will have to communicate with investors, so make sure it has everything that investors need and expect.

On January 4^th, the first business day of the new decade, Dow Jones VentureSource released figures suggesting that 2010 will be a stronger year for IPOs. They reported that eight companies completed public offerings in 2009, raising $904 million. This was a 64% increase from the $551 million generated through seven IPOs in 2008.

Looking ahead, VentureSource pointed to the 25 venture-backed companies that are currently in IPO registration as a sign that the market will improve as this year unfolds. The larger attendance and stronger sense of optimism at the most recent Deloitte Tech-Venture IPO Bootcamp, where I spoke on IPO investor relations, suggests the same thing.

So if the proverbial IPO window does open wider in 2010, a good number of venture-backed companies probably will jump through. This will send them into the hectic time of pre-IPO preparations.

Like skilled gymnasts or freestyle skiers, some of these companies will stick the landing. They’ll see good liquidity and strong underlying demand when their shares begin trading. Others will lose a few style points and generate only a tepid response from investors. For the underperformers, the leap into the public markets will conclude with a painful face plant.

Earlier this week I moderated a NIRI webinar with three senior-level investor relations officers representing the finance, real estate and retail industries. The panelists highlighted some new initiatives that IROs should consider in 2010 which, according to the Chinese calendar, is The Year of the Tiger. This just might have been the world’s only “Tiger”-related discussion in the past few weeks that had nothing to do with a certain golfer with a PR problem.

Within Chinese culture the number six is auspicious and considered good for business. So in keeping with this theme, here are six ideas that arose from the panel discussion that are worth considering as you develop your investor relations plan for the coming year.