‘I under-appreciated the work that went into IR’: What it’s really like to move from the sell side to investor relations

Former analysts, researchers and a corporate access specialist on ‘going corporate’

When asked for an example of a time she really leaned into her skills honed on the sell side, Bonita To, director of investor relations at First Quantum Minerals, points to a unique situation: the shutting down of one of the firm’s mines by the Panamanian government in November 2023.

‘The balance sheet became quite distressed and it was very apparent that we would need to take some action in terms of addressing our liquidity constraints – including going to the capital markets,’ she recalls.

At the time, To says the company expected to potentially need as much as $500 mn to $800 mn from the market. ‘Having worked on equity deals for other companies when I was on the sell side, I knew that that was a lot of money to raise,’ she explains. ‘For a deal of that size to be successful, every order needed to count.’ This meant that, from ‘November to January, I did not turn one investor call away. It was about making sure that every investor had their questions answered based on publicly available information and, if the time came, the demand would be there.’