Mike Vallie is a Vice President on Westwicke's medical technology and diagnostics teams. He has extensive experience in financial planning and analysis. He has a BS from George Mason University and an MBA in finance from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.
In 2018, we wrote a piece on best practices to manage and communicate with the growing retail investor community. While the basic tenants of those recommendations hold today, the retail investor has fundamentally changed over the last couple of years.
One of the most critical aspects of being able to effectively communicate with Wall Street is to understand how it views you, your company, and your story. A solid understanding of the lens through which you are viewed can give you the foundation to develop a strategic communication plan. Unfortunately, Wall Street doesn’t sit down as a group to develop a single view on your company — each sell-side analyst and investor develops his or her own unique opinion that is influenced by a wide variety of factors.
An acquisition carries the promise of growth and change, and a fair amount of risk, for any company. As a buyer, you may be seeking to broaden your service offerings or geographic footprint, add a new technology, transform the company by expanding into a new healthcare segment, or become a bigger player in a consolidating market.
The prospect of change can be exciting and energizing. At the same time, the process — from shopping to deal integration — is complex and requires skillful planning and management.
While most management teams tend to view investors as strictly institutional — professionals putting capital to work for mutual funds, hedge funds, family offices, asset managers, etc. — “retail investors,” individuals investing their personal capital, are continuing to become a bigger and more influential part of the investor landscape.
This emerging community of investors runs the gamut in terms of profile and motivation. They’re day-traders moving in and out of stocks on an everyday basis, individuals controlling the execution of their retirement funds, households investing for the future, true speculators looking for high-flying returns, and everyday people simply looking to generate extra cash.
