CFO of Canadian mining firm on the complexities and rewards of M&A, the benefits of face-to-face corporate access and the many ways IR delivers value to the company
To mark the first of the year’s CFO interviews, we headed to Toronto to talk IR with Greg Fisher, finance chief at Alamos Gold – a company that has been repeatedly recognized for its efforts in investor relations, most recently seeing head of IR Scott Parsons take home the best investor relations officer (mid cap) trophy at the IR Magazine Awards – Canada 2024, while Fisher and Alamos CEO John McCluskey were shortlisted in the best IR by senior management category.
Fisher, who has a two-decade career in what he describes as the ‘niche’ sector that is mining, tells us about what he looks for in his head of IR Scott Parsons (who we also interviewed for a separate piece coming soon), the firm’s informal approach to assessing IR success and how Alamos taps into that ‘gold rush’ feeling for investors.
How would you sum up your approach to IR?
My approach is really about collaborating with our team on IR. We have a very strong IR team that are considered among the best in the mining industry, and so it’s about letting them take the lead and collaborating with them as needed.
What that collaboration comes down to is critical messaging – around key transactions, around different events that happen during a quarter. That is where I think it is important for CFOs to work with IR. And then telling the story is another piece to it, making sure that we’re all on the same page when we go to tell that story.
I’ve been with Alamos for 15 years and I’ve been in the industry for just over 20 years. That experience and the level of trust that – both internally and externally – allows you to navigate certain challenges and potential difficult conversations in a way that delivers productive and positive outcomes.
Given this collaborative effort, what do you look for in your head of IR?
I look for somebody that understands the industry, because mining is a bit of a niche industry. They need to understand the industry and the company, so that they can tell the story just as well as the CEO or the CFO – or even better, frankly, because they are so close to that messaging. What it comes down to is understanding of the company, understanding of the strategy and being able to tell that story properly to the to the market on how we plan to execute that strategy.
You mentioned how specific mining is as an industry. Does that translate to the types of investors typically buying Alamos Gold?
We get specialty funds, which would probably make up the majority of our shareholders. They are pretty well versed in mining and would understand the intricate nature of underground mining or exploration potential. But we also have generalists, where you have to take a much higher viewpoint. They will look much more at the business fundamentals.
It depends on the investor that you’re speaking with as to how granular you get into the business.
Alamos Gold has won multiple IR Magazine Awards. Can you share an example of when IR has really proven its worth to both you personally and to the company more broadly?
IR proves its worth throughout the year. But if I was going to point to a couple of examples, the most recent example would be when we did the acquisition of Argonaut Gold in 2024. We announced that in March, and as part of it our IR team put together a presentation deck was very effective in outlining the strategic rationale and what the financial synergies were for that transaction. It went a long way towards ensuring the market understood that transaction very quickly.
That is just the most recent example. But anytime we do an investor day, the amount of prep that the IR team does along the way to make that run smoothly and really point out the positive catalysts that we have is critically important too.
And how do you measure the success of the company’s IR efforts?
We don’t use specific KPIs. It’s word of mouth, it’s feedback that we get from investors and from the analyst community. We will, from time to time, get feedback from those sources – and they are going to tell you if they’re getting what they need from the IR team, whether it’s messaging, within our disclosures or within our presentation materials.
We also get formal feedback. When we do investor roadshows, for example, we will get formal feedback provided to us that is typically more focused on the company story and our strategy, rather than on IR as a whole.
What percentage of investor one-on-ones do you typically attend, and how you make the decisions on which meetings to be in and which ones to perhaps let somebody else lead?
I actually went back and looked and I participated in close to 50 percent of our total investor meetings for 2024, representing about 125 meetings. I also participate in all the major conferences and that’s where we have a lot of our meetings. We’ll do certain investor roadshows as well.
In terms of what meetings to attend, for any major shareholder we’ll typically have McCluskey, the CEO, myself, Scott, our head of IR, and our chief operating officer Luc Guimond. From there, it’s simply about the allocation of time: who is available and what area the investor is looking to get more details on, whether it’s strategy, operations, exploration or ESG.
What about virtual versus in-person?
We do a combination of both. Every major conference we will attend in person. And I don’t think there’s any challenges in getting people out to those – the challenge is more around ad hoc meetings, which we will often do virtually largely because to travel for one or two different meetings just does not make a ton of sense from a management time perspective.
But we primarily do in-person meetings because, frankly, it’s good to speak to our investors face-to-face rather than virtually.
What’s your favorite thing about the IR work that you do?
My favorite thing is probably playing a critical role in creating and managing any messaging around key developments or key transactions, because when that messaging resonates with the markets, it’s quite rewarding.
And what is your least favorite?
I’m not sure there’s a least favorite. Maybe the amount of travel that can potentially hit in waves, which is something that you need to manage, but it’s not something that negatively impacts my interest in supporting the IR effort. It is just part of the job.
What has been your biggest challenge as CFO?
It’s definitely not IR-related: it is probably the intricacies of doing an M&A transaction. That is an interesting challenge – but not from the due-diligence perspective, or anything along those lines. It’s mainly on the social side of the negotiation once it has been announced: it’s the heavy lifting on ensuring that we have successful integration of the acquired business.
The Argonaut transaction was an example of navigating those challenges, but it led to a very successful transaction for the company: we were up 7 percent on the date of announcement and have had very positive feedback on that transaction from investors, given the synergies that are involved. So there are challenges along the way, but it’s rewarding in the end when it is executed well.
What advice can you share for others in the CFO role?
I think the most important thing is that the CFO needs to be more than a pure finance person. We need to be a strategic partner to the business and to the CEO and really contribute to all aspects of the company. It also means that you’re cross-functional: you’re collaborating with other departments from legal to HR, from IR to operations and others.
This cross-collaboration is critical to ensuring that a CFO can contribute to multiple different areas of the business and to the strategy, rather than being purely focused on finance. What it really means is that you need to be an executive first and a functional leader second.
Mining seems like such an interesting space. Do investors get a ‘gold rush’ feeling when they come to visit your sites?
We get a lot of new investors coming who say they’ve never seen an underground operation, or they’ve never seen a big open pit operation – it’s always great to have those conversations where it’s a learning experience for the investor.
That ‘gold rush’ feeling is evident when we have stakeholders at our Island Gold Mine, which is a high-grade underground mine. The tour of the core shack is always a crowd pleaser, where we display core from drilling that has significant amounts of visible gold – that always creates excitement among visitors.
Does that excitement translate into a higher number of retail investors for you at Alamos Gold?
I think it does. You’ll always have a retail investor base that thinks gold is going to go to the moon and are focused on higher leverage names in early-stage companies. But retail investors also view a company like Alamos as an attractive opportunity, given our strong fundamentals as a producing company, growth trajectory and history of returns over the long term. Retail investors are typically long-term focused and given the exploration success we have had across our entire asset base which supports our growth, I think Alamos fits the bill well for many in this segment of investors.
