Is it feast or famine for your investors?

This week, I spoke to three overseas-based, but locally listed CEOs.

All of them had come off the back of an Australian roadshow, spending a few weeks here, meeting face to face with their major shareholders, brokers, firms etc.

Why are they meeting face to face? Because it works so well. We know that roadshows aren’t broken.

You get to get in front of someone, they get to see you, hear what you’re excited about and ask questions.

Whether it’s a 2 week international roadshow or a trip across country - letting people see you and hear from you, drives engagement.

Engagement drives buying and holding - which is what we all want.

And the perfect roadshow isn’t complete without a couple of corporate lunches or dinners, and they’re not calorie-conscious sessions either.

There is plenty to drink and plenty to eat.

At the height of this roadshow, this private lunch or dinner, is where we get the most obvious gap between the haves and the have-nots of the investor world. Between the “Top 20” experience, and the long tail.

It is literally a feast, or famine.

• The top holders get time, attention, stories, answers.
• Non-holders, or the “not too big” holders, get bupkis, zero, zilch.

I think it’s quite fair to say, it is lopsided.

I mean, imagine if you treated your Top 20 like you treated the balance of the market.

• Let them get their information from CommSec.
• Send them a letter in the mail twice a year.
• Ask them for money or a vote once a year.
• Ignore their emails when they come in.
• Roll your eyes when they ask a question that you’ve already covered in an announcement two months ago.

They would leave. They would go get fed elsewhere. No wonder retail leave now.

So - whats the goal?

I mean - roadshows are great, but they don’t scale. If you have a feast with everyone, you’ll need 5 people to run it and won’t get any ‘real’ work done.

But just because you don’t invite your long tail to the feast, doesn’t mean they need to starve. I mean - your Top 20 are great and everything, but do they even buy on market?

For the average ASX company, 90%+ of their weekly traded volume is retail and HNW. So you’re happy dropping $250 a head on a steak dinner but nothing to the shareholders who actually influence your share price.

So here’s the change for next year. Instead of having Feast & Famine, aim for Feast & Well-fed.

You’ll need to work out what well-fed is for you. Have a look at what you’re doing for the Top 20, what you do for the market, and find some mid points to lift the market up to.

• Do you call Top 20 investors on big news/quarterlies? Do more investor webinars.
• Do you welcome people when they buy big? Work out a way to broadly lift your shareholder on-boarding process.
• Do you call people to ‘tuck them in’? Set up a process to reach out to more at scale.

If you feed them, even a bit more than you do now, they won’t go hungry and leave for greener pastures.

Realise that how you engage your base is in your control, make some changes now, so that 2024 is so much better than 2023.