The IR Playbook Every Company Needs Before Activists Show Up — Aaron Bertinetti

Joshua Wilson: 0:00

Hey, good day everybody. Welcome to the Investor Relations podcast. This podcast is so fun because we get to have conversations with many different IR groups, investor relations groups, but we also dive in and talk to family offices and private equity groups, and people who raise capital for a living. And we wanna gain the ex- you know, the, all of the information and, and share it with you, the community, to do this, to build better relations between investors and the people raising the capital or the companies needing the capital. The investor relations is about relationships. So let's dive in. We, we have a great, uh, guest on, on the line today. Uh, Aaron, welcome to the podcast, man.

Aaron Bertinetti: 0:38

Thanks very much, Josh.

Joshua Wilson: 0:39

Yeah. All right. Why don't you kick off with telling us about who you are and what you do?

Aaron Bertinetti: 0:45

Sure. So, uh, my name's Aaron Bertinetti, and I am the CEO of Computershare's investor engagement business in North America. Uh, for those who aren't aware of Computershare, Computershare is a listed company out of Australia, uh, that serves publicly listed companies around the world, uh, more than 25,000 at last count, uh, including over 2,500 here in the United States, uh, and about 58% of the S&P 500 are clients. Um, so my business sits within what's called issuer services, and is focused specifically on any interaction companies have, uh, with their investor base. Uh, so in terms of investors, we're not just talking about shareholders. We're talking about fixed income investors, we're talking about retail shareholders, uh, certainly beneficial holders, asset managers, PMs, and analysts, uh, as well as obviously sell side, uh, as well as part of that mix. Um, investor engagement is the most recent business within Computershare and, uh, it's across sort of three different verticals. One is providing software, uh, for investor relations professionals. Two is providing intelligence services, so like data and analytics and surveillance of capital markets and flows. And three is advisory, so advising on things as straightforward as an annual meeting to more complicated things like M&A and activism

Joshua Wilson: 2:11

Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. So as we're going through this conversation today, some of the things that are gonna pop up is, you know, based on our discussion in the green room, is what's going on in, in the world of IR, right? It's rapidly changing with AI, with activism, with things going on in, in the world. So kinda give us an overview of what you're seeing. You know, managing 58% of the S&P, I mean, is, is quite impressive. And being able to see as a, as a wide swath of, you know, information coming through your path, what are you seeing in the world of IR that has changed so much recently?

Aaron Bertinetti: 2:45

So I think, like, if we zoom out and you kinda look at public markets, um, you have... Uh, there's a, a stark reality, which is basically we have about half the number of listed companies that we did about, uh, let's say 20 years ago, 25 years ago. Um, and there's a couple of key reasons for that. Uh, it's not as, uh, dour as that sounds. Um, the primary reason is about 95% of those companies that disappeared, uh, were acquired by other companies. And so the, the good story there is actually that if you go back, say, 50 years, we're basically 100 times, uh, the market cap, uh, for the companies that are listed. So they're much more valuable than they've been before. Uh, we have about 15 times the investors and, uh, who are into those companies, uh, verse, say, 50 years ago. Um, and so we have, like, a very vibrant, rich market with a lot more investors asking far more questions of much more valuable companies. Um, so for the role of IR, that role has evolved over time, but it's obviously becoming more and more challenging because you got more investors, more valuable companies, and a lot more tools like AI, as you mentioned, gaining a lot more scrutiny and a lot more kind of noise, if you will, uh, for investor relations professionals to negotiate and, and navigate and find their way through, uh, to make sure that their message for their company cuts through to the market. Um, and so from my point of view, I, I, I think, like, the most important thing for an IR person is to be able to find that signal in the noise. And that noise isn't just external, it's also internal, because investor relations used to be just focused on earnings and investor days. Um, and now it's kind of year-round. You're always on the road talking to investors. You're fielding calls. But what's really dramatically changed over the last decade or so has actually been the amount of stakeholders internally, uh, that are working with you as a IR professional in terms of, you know- Investor issues are coming through, say, the corporate secretary's office or the general counsel's office, coming through the C-suite, coming through various business lines, coming through, uh, issues like communications, PR, uh, even customers themselves, uh, and issues like ESG and sustainability as well. But there's a lot more other things that as an IR, uh, pro you need to kind of, like, deal with. Um, and so I think that changes the profile of what a investor relations function is. It's much closer to the C-suite. It's much more strategic, and it's much more involved across the business, rather than just being solely an operational, uh, and execution, uh, role just for earnings.

Joshua Wilson: 5:39

Yeah. So as you're seeing this more strategic play closer to the C-suite, what is, what has that required of the IR teams? Or as people are looking for either to bring something internally or use external partners, h- how has that shaped the decisions that C-suite has to make on a daily basis?

Aaron Bertinetti: 6:01

So I think there's a couple of things. I mean, the first thing is that, uh, what a investor relations, uh, person looks like has changed. Uh, you know, you need to have the rigor, uh, from a financials perspective to actually understand the numbers and communicate the numbers with analysts. But now you need to be able to also, uh, communicate much more effectively with C-suite and also the board, um, and with far more stakeholders, both internally and externally. So, you know, I often describe the role of invest- as sort of being a strange mix of being a diplomat, uh, and a negotiator, both internally and externally. Um, you're often dealing with issues where people don't agree, either out in the marketplace or even internally where there's different, uh, views. So you need to sort of, uh... You know, that, that's a tricky position to be in, particularly when one side's telling one t- thing, say, an analyst outside the firm, and your management team's telling you another thing internally, and you kind of need to get to a productive aligned outcome, uh, that can help you move forward. Um, the other roles of IR, uh, are probably a little bit better understood, but are becoming more prominent, which is, you know, in a lot of ways sales and marketing and communications. So ultimately, your job is to communicate, uh, effectively the story, uh, of your company, uh, to collect the intelligence and the feedback that you get from the market to inform your C-suite, uh, about, you know, "Here's what the market's saying. Here's what they're saying about our competitors. Uh, here's how we need to adjust our strategy most effectively to exploit that and, uh, please our investors and analysts to, to drive that stock higher and get volatility down, if possible." Um- Yeah, so it's become a much more multifaceted role, uh, than it has been before. And in terms of providers, we haven't kind of seen that change as much as you would've expected. So we've certainly seen a lot more tools, but often those tools are quite fragmented. So, uh, you go over here for one tool, you go over there for another tool, and behind me there's probably another tool that you're using. And, and the role of IR has become sort of part of administrating all those tools, which is another type of noise, uh, and figuring out what's more impor- uh, most important to give you that operational leverage when you're dealing with your own C-suite. So, you know, I think the reason I'm sitting where I'm sitting, and I came from, uh, IR at, uh, JP Morgan, um, is because there's clearly a need to kind of bring all those various tools together so that, uh, IR is not dealing with multiple, multiple platforms and different looks, but can kind of have a holistic view of the marketplace, uh, and respond to that noise and find that signal much quicker, uh, to help its C-suite and, um, board, uh, do a much better job in terms of managing the company.

Joshua Wilson: 8:46

So for people who are, let's just say, uh, future IR professionals, right? They're go- maybe going to college somewhere or, you know, looking to build out their resume. What kind of things should be, should they be thinking about to be able to, you know, increase their craft in diplomacy, negotiation, sales, marketing- Yeah communication? I mean, that's, that's a big order to put.

Aaron Bertinetti: 9:10

It's a great question. I, I really like that you asked the question because, um, one of the reasons I was attracted to IR was that, you know, sure there's, if you're interested in financial markets, I think it's a, it's a great career. But I think the thing that's often lost, uh, with people, either, uh, people selling investor relations solutions or just talking about investor relations, uh, in general, is that it is a people business. Um, and, you know, particularly in a world with a lot of AI, it's kind of one, one of the roles that is very heavy on very human skills. Mm-hmm. So your ability to communicate, your ability to understand, to think critically around what people are telling you. You know, often one of the tricks is actually not what the person says, but understanding the meaning underlying of, of, of the words that they're saying, uh, which are not always the same thing. Um, and then being able to kind of have difficult conversations with your own management team, your board, as well as investors, uh, about, uh, you know, fairly complex, uh, issues, but they can span all kinds of different subject matter and industries. So I think if you're, uh, in college or thinking about what you wanna do, I think, you know, it's a really- Interesting career that you're going to spend a lot of time with a lot of different people talking about a lot of different topics. Um, you know, in my time, uh, at my previous firm when I was sitting in an IR seat, um, we could spend one day talking about, uh, AI. We could spend another day talking about, uh, banking regulation. We could spend another day talking about geopolitics, another day talking about climate, another day talking about, uh, corporate governance and who's on the board, uh, and, and, uh, you know, the CEO succession plan. So there's a lot of variety in what you can do. It's sort of the way I would pitch it to young people, it's sort of how they might have thought about something like going to a strategic consulting firm like a McKinsey or, or, or such in the past where you get to look at a lot of different problems. The difference is, is that you actually get to follow through and communicate, uh, on those things and engage with the people who are actually making the decisions in the C-suite.

Joshua Wilson: 11:14

Yeah. Diplomacy comes in, I think, this is my advantage point of why you might have said that, and I love that, 'cause I think that a lot of times people lack that as consultants- Mm ... that diplomacy of being able to manage up, strategize up to C-suite and board, but also external to key stakeholders and shareholders. So the question of diplomacy is this. As I- you know, internal IR or, or using a group like Computershare, right? You're, you start to see signals. Let's say we're seeing signals of potential activism, right? Yeah. We have to go report that back in to the C-suite and to the board. The diplomacy has to be, we have to do it in a way, right, that is well-received. Right. And that also, hey, maybe here's some potential things to do moving forward. Walk us through that kind of scenario, and where could it go wrong if you lack diplomacy or tact or strategy?

Aaron Bertinetti: 12:13

Right. I mean, this is, this is kind of right at the core of, like, a, a good IR person, right, is like how do you, um, how do you communicate uncomfortable messages to- Exactly uh, effectively the people who decide your fate? Uh, you know, a lot of people think that IR is defined by, uh, how, um, the stock price is, but you know, to be frank, it's really how the CEO or CFO feels about you, uh, and your performance. So, like, you really, you are in a difficult position there. Um, look, I think, like, the most important thing from an activism point of view is to recognize straight out of the gate that there's only two types of companies in the world, uh, those with activists and those that will have activists. And the most important thing is to be, um, ready and prepared before you ever have a sniff, a whiff of activists at the proverbial gate, so to speak. So, you know, how do you do that? I think there's a couple of key things that you, you need to do, and we obviously spend a lot of time with our clients, um, helping them do these type of things. First thing is you got to have a playbook. Like, how do you actually prepare, uh, for that type of scenario? Who are your advisors, uh, including ourselves? Who are your, uh, bankers? Who are your lawyers? Who, who's your comms firm? To get ready for that type of scenario so that when it does actually turn up, um, you're ready to make that first, second, third call, uh, rather than spending a, a number of weeks while the activist is building their position, uh, publicly now, um, and you're trying to sort of figure out what you're going to do. You're kind of ready to move from, uh, day one. Um, the second thing is that you've got to be monitoring your stock. Um, and this kind of goes to how do you kind of smooth that conversation with the C-suite? It, you know, often the best way to do that is by having evidence. Um, and so that comes in two forms. One is the conversations and the engagements you have with your investors and obviously, uh, you know, keeping notes and recording that and, um, being able to analyze it in a useful way, a decision useful way, uh, that you can actually point to conversations that link to particular risks or opportunities in your stock amongst your investor base. The second thing is actually monitoring the flows, um, and understanding not just who's, like, on your register, but who's hiding under that, uh, from a capital markets perspective, whether it's on the debt or equity side, so that you can spot activists before they actually reveal themselves. And we spend a lot of time specifically doing that. Um, if IR has those tools, so they've got good advisors, they've got the intelligence, and they've got, like, records of, like, all the engagements they've had, uh, that are actually organized by, you know, sort of things that align pot- potentially with a, a threat, that makes the conversation much easier, uh, with a management team that may not be re- uh, receptive to, uh, criticism from outside the market is to say,"Well, look, here's all the evidence." Um, and I think that that is the most important tool that IR can have is, like, really good information that gives them, um... It's not, I wouldn't say it's the, the cream on top, but it's certainly, like, you know, smooths the conversation with your C-suite, um, in finding a way forward.

Joshua Wilson: 15:35

Yeah, I think that if we, if we look through the lens of IR is measured by stock price-

Aaron Bertinetti: 15:41

Yeah

Joshua Wilson: 15:41

and if that's how you s- if that's how it's framed from day one, it's gonna be a challenge when stock goes up or down or when stuff changes, right? If that's how you're measured. The, the fear of that, if, if you frame it that way going in, if the stock goes down, you're doing bad at your job. If sco- stock goes up, you might be doing good at your job, external of any external factors, right? One of the things that I think through is instead of looking at it, you know, like how, how are you preparing the teams by the playbook and by the monitoring and, and how these things, and how can we increase the shareholder trust over time and build those long-term relationships? The question is this. For a larger company, it seems, makes sense, monitor this, do this, especially if you have a lot of trading and a lot of volume. For a microcap company, how in the world are they gonna do all this, you know, monitor floats, monitor stocks? Not e- not only who's investing, but what are the, some of those umbrellas underneath or companies underneath that? Like, how in the world can a microcap company approach that?

Aaron Bertinetti: 16:51

I mean, I mean, the simple answer or the, uh, facetious one for me is just come to, come to us and we'll solve that problem for you. Come to Capital Market. But I think the, um... Which we're happy to do, but I think, like, if you're sitting at a microcap, um, or a recently listed company and your, y- you know, really probably your priority is actually, uh, expanding your shareholder base. Yeah. So, uh, it's, you know, yes, you've got conversations, but most of your holders are probably act- ones who are with you in the private market before you listed, um, or they're gonna be like the family offices or large kind of individual holders. Um, and so your task there is a little bit different, right? So flows may not be as important. What's more important is identifying the right investors for your stock, who understand your story, um, are not going to be trading in and out of it like a hedge fund, uh, which obviously would cause, uh, volatility and, and potential of, uh, uh, future threats. Um, you want to attract sort of like long-term holders that understand what you're trying to do over the long term. They have a bit of patience. Um, and, and, you know, that really comes down to investor targeting.

Joshua Wilson: 17:57

Okay.

Aaron Bertinetti: 17:57

Um, and how are you targeting, uh, those individual, uh, investors. And I think there's a number of different ways there and, and, um, I won't spend too much time talking about it, but we, we obviously see a s- there's some viable ways to improve targeting, uh, that we'll discuss over the summer, um, that aren't available right now. Um, and so typically targeting's done by sort of looking at, say, your sector and saying, "Well, investors are invested in the same sector as me, so therefore I should go to the same investors as my competitor." The reality is, uh, unsurprisingly, that doesn't work very well, um, because the investor's already chosen your competitor. Mm-hmm. So that's a very, that's like a switch win in sales talk, right? You're trying to convince somebody to dump their girlfriend and start dating you. Like, that's not, that's not gonna work very well. So what you actually need to find are the investors who- Uh, investing companies that look like you, not necessarily your sector, but have similar kind of characteristics where they might have not deployed capital yet. Uh, and then we do a lot of this work, where might not deployed capital yet, um, but are looking for something to invest. And that's where, if you're a microcap, that's what you should be focusing on. It's like, how do I build out investors that are aligned with me over the long term, um, and attracting people who are ready to deploy capital, as opposed to trying to convince somebody who already has in one of your competitors.

Joshua Wilson: 19:21

Super interesting. So instead of trying to get someone to switch their dollars from there to here, right, is look for people who are signaling in this direction, that are heading in the direction, and then give them an opportunity, right? So maybe explore here.

Aaron Bertinetti: 19:35

Right. Yeah, and we often, we often see with microcaps, uh, one of the tricks there is you may see, like, an aspirational investor that you want, and you can understand the type of companies that that individual, uh, fund or portfolio manager invests in, the characteristics, say, from a fundamentals point of view. And you can actually line that up with your strategy and figure out, well, if I can get my, um... Usually for microcap you don't have, uh, good EPS. But, like, if, if I can get my revenues to X or I can hit this strategic milestone, um, or demonstrate a, a number of milestones, or commercializing something if I'm in tech or pharma, um, then I will get on the radar of this person. They'll be more likely to invest. So it's also sort of very nicely aligned with sort of your future kind of strategy as a smaller company trying to grow.

Joshua Wilson: 20:27

Yeah. I like that. Yeah, finding that alignment of where, where they're heading. Now, we won't get too deep into this, 'cause I know you guys are gonna be rolling out some great features in the- Yeah in the future. But how... What are some signals that you could look at to see who's signaling in that direction? It seems like you're, you're trying to find out what, what are they doing, what are they saying, and where they're heading, but what are you looking for to find that as a IR company? How do you guys approach that?

Aaron Bertinetti: 20:51

Yeah. So there's a number of ways you do it. I mean, the first one is obviously, uh, scraping as much information of, on filings as possible as you can. And then two is actually, uh, analyzing, uh, behavioral trends of the funds themselves and figuring out sort of when do they enter and exit stocks, uh, what do they look like from a fundamentals point of view, what do they look like from a, um, a, you know, a non-financial point of view. So like commercial strategy, management team, that type of stuff.

Joshua Wilson: 21:18

Hm.

Aaron Bertinetti: 21:19

Um, and, you know, it's not unlike, uh, you know, I made the joke about dating girlfriends, but, and I'm very happily married, but, like, it's, it's, it's- Not unlike a Tinder. Yeah. Um, you're, you're trying to do matchmaking. That's what, that's what targeting is. And so, you know, using providers like ourselves, we can help you with that. Um, the difference is obviously that you wanna find a bunch of matches that you can date all at the same time,'cause you want them around for a very long time, uh, invested in your stock. Um, I, I... So you look at the behavioral data of the funds, you look at, um, sort of all the financial information and flows that have been disclosed through the SEC and other filings. And then what you need to put over the top is kind of like test what your statistical algorithms tell you, and figure out, well, if I manipulate this in a certain way and I can back test it, what has actually proven to happen? Yeah. Um, so then, then you become much more certain in to- in terms of the, uh, firms you target. Uh, you know, not to spend too, too much time on here, but to kind of explain it for an audi- not familiar with, uh, investor targeting. Uh, if you were just to take, like, a random list of investors anywhere in the world as a company, let's say you're microcap, chances are you're gonna have to do 300 meetings before one of them lands, right? So that, that, that's the raw prob- probability. And, like, we've tested this, right? So it's one in 300. Now, if you find a targeting service, you probably improve your, uh, odds to about somewhere between, let's call it one in 100 down to maybe one in 50, one in 30. So you get it down, but it's still pretty bad odds, right? It's not, not great. Like, you still gotta do a lot of meetings to get that new investor. We think there are ways, and we've, we've proven this internally, uh, and with some clients. We think there's ways to get that down to better than, uh, one in 10. Um, and that's using a bunch of different approaches to actually get it down and then proving it through back testing. Now, why is that important? Because a big part of IR's role is going on the road and talking to investors and taking the C-suite with them, which is super expensive.

Joshua Wilson: 23:37

It's expensive.

Aaron Bertinetti: 23:38

Right? And it's taking a management team away from, like, their day-to-day role to go and talk to investors, uh, to try and attract more capital. Uh, 'cause you talk about stock price, we talked about volatility. One of the key things of investor relations is that if you do a good job, you're bringing down the cost of capital, right? Right.

Joshua Wilson: 23:54

So

Aaron Bertinetti: 23:56

you're spending all that time doing all those meetings with very low returns. So if you can get the number of meetings versus the one down to, like, a one in 10 or even a one in 30, they are exceptionally better odds with a much higher return on investment for management's time on the road. And so, like, you know, particularly for that micro, small to mid cap, that's really important to nail well

Joshua Wilson: 24:23

Yeah. Yeah, bringing a CFO and a CEO on the road to do investor meetings, you know, unless you're bundling the meetings, and, and that's a part of the IR strategy too. What conference should I be at? What kind of- Right group meeting should I be at? Should I be at this family office consortium or that family office group? Or, you know, like, where should we be investing our time? That's where strategy of the IR goes, right? And they look at it and they go, "Cool." Right. At this stage of company, this is who we should be talking to. Oh, I didn't even know. I thought we should be just putting on, you know, stuff on Twitter or, you know, X or, you know, LinkedIn or... Which is all great. May- maybe if

Aaron Bertinetti: 24:58

you have a high level of retail shareholders.

Joshua Wilson: 25:01

Right. Awesome, man. I... We could talk about that all day. What are you... You know, kind of switching gears, what are you seeing in the world of, you know, SPAC IR? Is that something you guys, uh, are paying attention to?

Aaron Bertinetti: 25:13

Yeah. I mean, definitely. I mean, like, obviously we're seeing sort of a reheating of the IPO market, and the SPAC market, uh- Yeah ... will go along with that. Um, actually has been interesting, sort of like over the last, let's call it, six months of sort of seeing a, a number of SPACs kind of finding their target companies and- Mm-hmm and, uh, moving to the next stage of their story. Um, I think it's interesting because you're sort of going basically with, like, a bunch of money, and then all of a sudden you are actually a thing. Um, and I, I, I think, like, what's fun about that from my perspective is, like, you get to sort of like create the narrative from day one as a public company, which is not what usually happens, right? Yeah. It's like usually you're like a private company, you have a track record, you've got a story you've told your private investors, and then you're introducing yourself to the rest of the world. But, you know, everybody knows what SpaceX is before it lists, right? SPACs are kind of interesting'cause you're just talking about a bunch of money that then, you know, find- finds all of a sudden. It's like, "Hey, uh, this is what we are. We're quantum computing," or,"We're, you know, space," or, "We're biotech," or whatever it may be. Um, so I think that's a really fun, uh, thing to be involved in. I think there the focus, you know, targeting's important, but there the, the focus is re- you've already got a bunch of investors in it already. So there the, the, the importance is really nailing the strategic narrative- Mm-hmm ... and understanding why people are already invested and, uh, telling that growth story, right? Because we do see, particularly with SPACs, uh, historically a, a SPAC basically has, uh, almost all SPACs have a chart that looks like this. Like it's just like an inverted, uh, you know, just down, and then hopefully if you do a good job it goes back up. But, you know, the trick of getting that curve to go back up, uh, is really down to narrative and getting that story, uh, out to the market effectively.

Joshua Wilson: 27:04

Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's super cool. I like that. Now, you are creating the narrative from day one, but you're also building on the team success story."Hey, this is SPAC number seven that we've done. We've done this." Right."These are the acquisitions that we've done. These are, these are... This is what it's produced for us and our..." So it's, it's highlighting team- And new company in mid of what we're gonna plan on doing in the future. So

Aaron Bertinetti: 27:26

we- It's sort of like a nice combo between sort of like pu- um, investor relations and sort of like doing like a VC round where you're-

Joshua Wilson: 27:35

Right... Aaron Bertinetti: talking more about background, and their execution. So sort of a mix of that pitch deck with sort of the broader public markets of getting more institutional money into the, into the firm. Yeah. I love that, man. Super cool. Um, Aaron, in, in part of the conversations with, with shareholders, we mentioned a little bit of institutional, family office, retail, right? So there's different investors that you're having conversations with. Right. Why is it so important for a company to figure out who they're trying to talk to and create that message that resonates with their ideal investor or target group that they're working on, rather than just going, «Here's our messaging. Here's our messaging. Hopefully it lands»?

Aaron Bertinetti: 28:22

Well, I mean, like, there's, uh, like let's talk about noise for a second. We're gonna have this... I don't know. Like, you're gonna have to do some targeting and figure out that you got a good message that cuts through and people get attracted and whatnot. So like you can have whatever message you want, but if it's not an effective one and you don't deliver it to the right audience in the right place, uh, aligned with their interests, then nobody's gonna listen to it. Nobody's gonna follow through. And so I think for IR, that's, that's like a real problem that every company has, is that, um, unless you're the largest companies where everybody's already invested, um, you need to figure out a way to, for your narrative to cut through versus everybody else's. And so I think it's really important that, um, as part of that, where you already have an investor base of understanding why they like you. You know, "I like the stock." You know, well, why do you like the stock? Why? Yeah. Right? Um, and under- so that you can position your message to be more aligned with that narrative, and then where you realize that your strategy is gonna drift from what those investors originally invested in, in you for, um, that you have a narrative that you can either, you know, convey to them and, and bring them along with you, or a narrative that's gonna attract new investors that are going to align, uh, with that new strategy. So, you know, I, I- you can't, you can't drive blind. You need to be able to see where you're going, and you need to be able to see, like, out your windows and what's around you. Um, and so by engaging with all types of different investors, you can collect that. That's investor intelligence. Uh, that's information that's gonna help you figure out where you are today and how you navigate to where you wanna go.

Joshua Wilson: 30:04

I love this. As we, as we kind of end the near of our, our, our podcast interview, one of the things that I just thought was so, um, important to share, we have this intelligence. We ran some tests. We, we've got some feedback, right? At the C-suite, we've been going on these road tours. We've got all these notes. We've got these... You know, we've got people who said yes, people who've said no, but we have data now. Right. How do we operationalize that, so that way the, the person who's building the websites or the sending the emails or knocking on the doors, how do we operationalize that type of dou- uh, data to make sure we're moving together as a full with what we're learning so it's not wasted?

Aaron Bertinetti: 30:46

Yeah, I think it's software, right? I mean, I think, like, the, the reality is, is that whatever interaction you have as a company, um, you need to pull it all together. Um, and certainly our focus is, is figuring out, uh, solutions for, for investor relations, uh, where, you know, you might be having an engagement, but also your corporate secretary might be having a meeting, or, uh, somebody in the C-suite's having a meeting without IR in the room. And you're able to pull all that information, all that strategic intel into the one place. And then over the top of it, obviously have, um, the, the capital flows that you're ... on the equity and debt side, as well as I should mention the international side, 'cause that's a big piece for many of these companies. Um, but you understand, like, what it looks like under the surface, and then you can analyze sort of the commentary that's above the surface that you've got from your meetings and start the pattern recognition. Um, and then once you kind of identify sort of like, okay, what's the most, you know, decision useful two or three things that I need to focus on as a, as a team, um, then you decide whether you need to do that yourself or you need to go get an advisory firm like ourselves to kind of help you message or massage that message, um, into the marketplace.

Joshua Wilson: 32:01

Yeah, man. Super cool. So Aaron, do this. Give a, give a plug for your company. Uh, give a shout-out to the kind of groups that you wanna work with and, uh, maybe a good place for them to connect with you.

Aaron Bertinetti: 32:11

Sure. So our company's Computershare Investor Engagement. Uh, we're focused on solving every interaction between a company and their investor base. Uh, we provide software, advisory, and data ana- The intelligence layer for companies all in the one place with a single provider, so you have that holistic view. Uh, and we work with all companies, large and small, um, and those who want to become large companies or either microcaps or are about to list.

Joshua Wilson: 32:39

Yeah, man. Super cool. So ladies and gentlemen listening in, as always, reach out to our guests. Say thanks for being on the show. Their contact information will be in the show notes, so you can connect with them directly. If you have questions about, you know, their group, just reach out to them. If you need help connecting the dots between, uh, between them, you can head over to, uh, the investorrelationspodcast.com. Fill out a quick form. Happy to open up, uh, some of those conversations with our guests with you. And, uh, and if you're working on, in and on the world of investor relations, especially if this is where you wanna go in your future career, we would love to hear your thoughts and questions about h- what you're seeing, studying at universities. You know, bring back some of the questions you have, and we'll share those with the guests as well. But then, till then, we'll talk to you all on the next episode. Cheers, everyone.