When the IR team at Sainsbury’s first started using ingage in 2018, the primary goal was to conduct more direct activity – ‘particularly roadshow activity’ – with investors in an efficient way, explains Susie Lynskey, IR manager at the UK supermarket giant.
‘We were aware that, increasingly, investors wanted more direct engagement from corporates [and], as there had been a reduction in broker involvement, the IR team stepped up to take on more responsibility,’ she says. ‘We needed a solution to support our internal resourcing.’
Since then, the IR team’s use of the platform has grown as ingage has broadened its offering.
‘One element of ingage we have been pleasantly surprised by is the success we have had in using the feedback functionality,’ continues Lynskey. The platform offers the option to send a feedback request after a meeting and she says the responses Sainsbury’s has received from investors through the function ‘have been high quality and the layout allows for real candor.’
Being able to download the feedback in Excel or PDF allows ‘for really useful insight’, with the ability to track trends over time, she adds.
Lynskey’s glowing review of the ingage tech – and also the people at the firm, who she says offer a personalized approach – covers a range of tools that her team has increasingly made use of, including the ‘build your own roadshow’ functionality.
‘[That functionality] has allowed us to reduce our reliance on brokers, and we’ve been really pleased with the flexibility the tool offers us and the greater control we’ve had over our planning,’ she notes. ‘It has made scheduling complicated roadshow timetables very straightforward.’
While Lynskey says the team is moving toward using all elements of the platform, there are still IR tasks where a combined approach works best. She cites investor targeting as one such example.
‘While there is good functionality in ingage to pool shareholder register analysis and meeting history, investor targeting is quite a subjective area and we use a lot of input from our advisers in building a quality target list,’ she says. ‘But we do maintain that target list in ingage and track engagement with those target investors.’
This is an extract of an article that was published in the Winter 2021 issue of IR Magazine. Click here to read the full article.
