Posted on December 5th, 2018. Posted by John Woolford, MBA
At-the-market (ATM) offerings, a tool early-stage companies have used for years to quickly raise capital, have grown increasingly common among healthcare players, with biotech firms in particular embracing this funding method.
ATM financing provides young, publicly traded companies with a relatively agile, low-key, low-hassle, lower-cost way to sell newly issued shares to finance growth — without the need to stage a road show or even announce the sale. This works well for businesses like biotech firms that need to fund R&D and general operations before their products have received government approval for commercial sale.
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Posted on May 23rd, 2017. Posted by John Woolford, MBA
Recently, we hosted a luncheon discussion, led by the Healthcare Investment Banking group at Wells Fargo Securities, with executives from several life science companies. The primary topic was the outlook for Life Science Capital Markets in 2017. Geoffrey Goodman, Managing Director of Equity Capital Markets at Wells Fargo, and Filippo Petti, Vice President of Healthcare Investment Banking at Wells Fargo, led the discussion.
Below are our key takeaways from the discussion.
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Posted on October 19th, 2016. Posted by ICR Westwicke
As an executive, you understand the importance of formulating a long term capital sourcing strategy that will provide you the cash necessary to support your company’s growth. You are constantly asked in investor meetings: “How much cash do you have on the balance sheet?” “How long will that last you?” So how do you prepare to ensure that your business remains well capitalized?
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Posted on April 6th, 2016. Posted by ICR Westwicke
It would be great if you could attend every investor conference you’re invited to. After all, they’re an excellent way to tell your story, deepen your relationships with analysts who cover you, begin new relationships with analysts who don’t yet cover you, and ultimately target and attract new investors.
But it’s impossible for any public company to go to all of them. There are more than 100 Wall Street conferences in healthcare alone, and many more focused on growth-oriented companies of any industry.
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Posted on October 14th, 2015. Posted by ICR Westwicke
In the past several months, several of our Medical Technology clients have participated in investment bank-sponsored conferences or traveled to meet investors in one-on-one meetings. In preparation for these meetings, we work with our clients to create a list of topical and provocative questions that investors are likely to ask, and we help to prepare scripted answers. We also create investor profiles ahead of every investor meeting so that our clients have information at their fingertips on competitive share positions, the investor’s background, and our insight as to focus areas for that particular investor.
While most questions that investors and analysts ask in these meetings pertain to the particulars of the business, revenue growth, and market dynamics, we have come to expect the unexpected. We know that thorough preparation is crucial.
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Posted on March 18th, 2015. Posted by ICR Westwicke
A CEO transition can be a time of great risk for a company’s stock as Wall Street attempts to determine all that the change signals. If a change in leadership is not communicated properly it could make your investors nervous. Effectively communicating the CEO succession can help boost confidence in investors — and prevent long term harm to your share price.
Here are a few guidelines to help effectively communicate a CEO transition:
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Posted on February 18th, 2015. Posted by Mike Piccinino, CFA
When it comes to investor relations (IR), remember that your company’s Internet presence often makes the first impression. In today’s frenetic capital markets environment, potential investors will often use your corporate website to quickly understand the fundamentals of your business before they decide to allocate time to a meeting with management.
The primary purpose of having a corporate website, of course, is so that you can easily share your company’s “story” with the marketplace. In order to be effective, the story must be communicated thoroughly, accurately and consistently across your website and all of your digital media, in a way that is easy for visitors to consume, understand and navigate.
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Posted on January 21st, 2015. Posted by John Woolford, MBA
Mark Twain said that the “difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
There’s a lesson in there for all of us. Say the wrong thing (or even the right thing poorly) and you’re going to underwhelm, disappoint, confuse, or even lose your listeners. And during your company’s earnings call, mistakes like that can cause a crisis.
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Posted on January 14th, 2015. Posted by ICR Westwicke
In the past several months, we have been asked by several of our medical device and diagnostics clients to conduct perception audits. Some were small and focused, with specific and timely topics in mind, whereas others were broad-based with long-term objectives. Often, investors and analysts provide feedback that is difficult to hear — especially when they are giving it to a third party and their comments will be confidential and/or not ascribed to them.
While no one wants to receive (or provide) negative feedback, it is important and often can be the most constructive data. If we could offer only one piece of advice to our clients, it would be to listen openly and objectively to your shareholders and analysts when you ask them for their opinion. Don’t try to talk them out of their viewpoint (for which you just asked them), and don’t discount their opinion because they are at a hedge fund or you think they don’t understand your company. Chances are, whatever their perspective, there are others with the same view. Investors are often happy and willing to offer their feedback — especially on a stock position that is meaningful to their fund performance — in an effort to help management teams communicate better. Let them. We think it’s enormously valuable, as their perceptions are your reality.
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Posted on March 6th, 2013. Posted by ICR Westwicke
All management teams and boards of directors want to know how they’re doing. For public healthcare companies, the wide variety of stock indices makes it easy to draw a comparison with peer companies. But finding the right index is key to making a meaningful comparison. Just because an index includes “technology,” “healthcare” or “mid-cap” in its name doesn’t mean it’s right for you. And the most popular indices are not always the right choices.
Fund managers, especially those who may not understand nuances in various healthcare sectors, will use an index to evaluate your firm’s performance. But, comparing against the wrong index can have serious implications: for instance, if an index that includes many larger cap companies (over $1 billion in market capitalization) is rising, but smaller companies aren’t sharing this momentum, then your smaller firm will compare poorly against the index – and undeservedly so. Further, smaller companies are more vulnerable to certain financial issues than multi-billion dollar firms; access to capital, product pipelines and market volatility can have an outsized effect on a small-cap firm’s stock performance.
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