How to plan your IR calendar

Now that the year is coming to an end, we would like to talk about the best way to plan you IR calendar for 2022. As a best practice, you should have your calendar ready by late December, or at the latest early January, since some of the conferences are already happening in January. We recommend you set out your goals for the year (you can visit our blog on “IR Roadmap 2021” here), and then develop your calendar off of that.

Here are eight easy steps to plan your 2022 IR calendar:

1. Start by blocking out holiday dates: to start, you should block in your calendar all the holidays in both Mexico, the US and Europe, remember to consider daylight savings time in New York and Mexico, since sometimes they change one-week apart.

2. Define your reporting dates: since reporting is mandatory, the next step would be to set the reporting dates on your calendar and place the rest of your events around those dates. You should also schedule the time and date for your earnings call, this way you can make sure both the top management and the IR team have it locked on their calendars and avoid double booking that date. If dates are 100% confirmed, we recommend sending the reporting calendar to your distribution list so investors and analysts can have them as well.

3. Keep in mind the quiet period: it is important to be mindful of the quiet period before earnings releases so that you don’t schedule investor days, conferences, or individual calls around these dates. Although the quiet period is not mandatory, we suggest not engaging directly with investors or analysts 2 or 3 weeks prior to the earnings release date. This way, you can avoid giving information or forward-looking statements about the upcoming results to a select group of investors or analysts.

4. Book your ordinary board meetings and annual shareholders’ meeting: talk to the top management and board members to schedule in advance ordinary board meetings and you annual shareholders’ meeting. This way you can book the time in advance to work on the materials you need for the meetings.

5. Choose which conferences to attend: conference dates are generally consistent from one year to the next, so you can get a very close idea of when the next year’s conference will be held. You can also ask Miranda-IR for the latest conference calendar to check the date of some of the most relevant conferences. Prior to the pandemic, a key factor in choosing which conferences to attend was your travel budget, which somewhat limited your ability to attend. Now in this world of hybrid events, it is easier to attend conferences and we recommend that you go to as many conferences as you can. Another good way to decide which conferences to attend is by doing a preliminary investor targeting exercise. This will reveal which regions have the most investors that are invested in your peers and help guide how you allocate your attention and resources. With respect to in person conferences it makes sense to prioritize and send CEOs/CFOs based on 1) banks that have best attendance and most influence (large global banks, like BofA, Morgan Stanley, or large regional ones, like BTG Pactual, etc.), 2) banks that provide research coverage of your company, 3) banks with the most influential analysts, determined by investor surveys, 4) naturally, it’s also important to support your lending banks and other key financial relationships with senior level attendance.

6. Plan your road trips: now it’s time to see where you can fit in non-deal roadshows. We suggest having at least one non-deal roadshow per quarter. You can apply the same trick as in choosing your conferences by doing a preliminary investor targeting exercise to define which investors you should target first.

7. Plan your investor day: it is a good practice that helps you keep the management close to the market and investors and analysts informed about the company’s strategy. We recommend having an investor day when you have something relevant to communicate, it could be a new strategy, the launch of a new business line, providing guidance, etc.

8. Include relevant dates and events: finally, include all other relevant events or dates such as the annual report, monthly reports (i.e., traffic report in the aeronautical industry), dividend payments, distribution payments for REITs, special committees.

To sum up, the most relevant things you should include in your IR calendar for 2022 are:

• Earnings report dates
• Ordinary board meeting dates
• Annual shareholders’ meeting
• 2 virtual or in person conferences per quarter
• At least 1 non-deal roadshow per quarter
• Annual report release date
• Investor day

As always Miranda IR is here to help with your IR Calendar, organizing virtual events, doing an investor targeting or anything else you may need for your IR strategy.

Sources:

https://www.irmagazine.com/corporate-access/five-steps-creating-ir-calendar

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quietperiod.asp