How do you set realistic expectations about your shares for management?
I’ll give you examples. One of our clients had a cyberattack and disclosed the impact, a material one degrading expected quarterly results. What to expect?
Shares are up on strong volume.
That’s great but it makes execs scratch their heads. And the reverse can happen.
“The division heads tell their teams that growth will translate into share-price gains,” the investor-relations director told me. “They deliver, and the stock goes down 7%.”
I was having this conversation in Silicon Valley. In fact, I had it twice the same day.
It illustrates a market transformation affecting investor-relations and investors. Fundamentals cannot be counted on to drive corresponding shareholder value. Active stock-pickers and IR professionals have been slow to adapt, harming outcomes for both.
I was at the whiteboard in a conference room with another technology IR head, who was comparing revenue and margin drivers for his company and its key peers.
“How do I get these numbers to translate into the share price?” he said.
“You’re making the job harder than it has to be today,” I said. “And you might create unrealistic expectations from management for IR and for the company.”
There’s one more implication (we’ll answer them all before we wrap). Things like stocks behaving unexpectedly shouldn’t be ignored or glossed over.
For example, we found water dripping from the air-handler housing in the basement for the central air-conditioning system at our house. Great timing. July.
We could say, “Huh. That’s not what we were expecting.” And go on about what we’re doing. But that’s a poor strategy, leaving us open to bigger troubles ahead.
When your stock doesn’t act as you expect, it’s water dripping from your air-handler, telling you, IR folks and investors, you’re missing something vital about the market.
Admit it. Most of us know the market has got a drippy coil. But we go on with what we’ve been doing. We’d rather ignore the leak in the basement than address it.
For whom is that bigger trouble? Your management team, IR. And your returns, investors. We should change what we’re doing, and revise expectations.
“I don’t want expectations for our stock,” you say. Would a board hire a CEO candidate who said, ‘Don’t expect anything from me’?
Back to our examples. In the cyberattack, Active money bought the news (bad clarity trumps okay uncertainty) but passive investment drove subsequent gains. The IR head appropriately differentiated the two and set expectations about trends and drivers. That’s good 21st century IR.
In the second example, don’t let the notion that growth will drive appreciation become an unmet expectation. Growth may boost the stock. But the IR Officer can go on the offensive with internal presentations showing how the market works and what role Story plays in setting price.
It’s up to IR to help management understand. If 80% of the time something besides Story sets price, doesn’t everybody internally have a right to know? Don’t disillusion the team by letting incorrect expectations survive. That’s bigger trouble.
At the whiteboard with our IRO wanting to get the market to value results better, what about doing the opposite? It’s easier, less stressful, data-driven. Let the market tell YOU what it values. If 20% of the market values your numbers, measure when that 20% sets price. (We do that with Rational Price and Engagement metrics.)
Then measure how the rest of the money behaves that doesn’t pay attention to Story, and show your management team its trends and drivers. Now you’ll know when it’s about you, your management team will have data-driven views of what the money is really doing, and you, there in the IR chair, will have wider internal value. And less stress.
That’s the right kind of realistic expectation.
What’s the market’s leaky coil? Two things. Passive investment is asset-management, not results-driven stock-selection. Prices expand or contract with the rate of capital inflows and outflows for indexes and ETFs. You don’t control it. It controls you.
And over 50% of daily volume comes from fleeting effort to profit on price-differences or protect and leverage portfolios and trades (often in combo). It prices your stocks without wanting to own them.
And speaking of expectations, options are expiring today through Friday. It’s rarely about you when that’s happening. Set that realistic internal expectation (and stop reporting results the third week of each new quarter).