Global Top 50 award winner: best small/mid-cap company
Global Top 50 rank: 4
Brazil Top 30 rank in 2015: 1
IR Magazine Awards won in 2015: 7
IR team size: 3
The first of five new entrants to the Global Top 10 list is Brazilian educational company Kroton, which also took home a special award at GIRF for best small/mid-cap company. Director of IR Carlos Lazar puts the team’s IR success down to teamwork and its availability to the financial community, having attended 220 one-on-ones, 21 conferences and eight non-deal roadshows over the year. Senior management contributed 14 days to conferences, adds Lazar, and attended 58 meetings.
Often, an IRO is most tested during difficult times, and Lazar says 2015 was ‘one the most challenging years we have faced’ – partly because of strict new regulatory changes and partly because of Brazil’s economic downturn. ‘Despite this, we created a lot of opportunities for the company and deepened the confidence and trust the financial market always places in us,’ he says.
The Kroton IR team focuses on four key areas: communication, maintaining a high level of management engagement with shareholders, having an easy-to-reach team with a high level of exposure, and conducting site visits – but for Lazar, credibility is key. In fact, gaining trust through credibility is the most important IR lesson he has learned, he says. ‘In the event of bad news, be transparent with the market,’ he advises. ‘Instead of avoiding the matter, talk about the projects focused on reducing the impact.’
So what next for Brazil’s most successful IR team? ‘The challenge for [2016] is the same – to not disappoint the market and to continue to seek the highest level of governance, academic quality and financial efficiency,’ says Lazar.
