Name: How to Elevate Your IR Engagement Strategies With Current and Prospective Investors
Uploaded: 2026-03-31T12:40:43.517Z
Duration: 1 h 3 min 36 s
Description: How to Elevate Your IR Engagement Strategies With Current and Prospective Investors

Transcript for "How to Elevate Your IR Engagement Strategies With Current and Prospective Investors": A mistake. I think we can start. How many people are connected? I think most of them. We are on stage. Okay. Good morning, and welcome to this event, IR event, IR webinar that is sponsored by our friends from Nasdaq, and it's titled how to elevate your IR engagement strategies with current and prospective investors. Before entering into the main topics, let me recall, the next events. So the on on the April 20, we'll have a macroeconomic and geopolitical event with Carlo Tomonte and Patrizia Bussoli. On the May 26, we will have an event called chat with the experts. So of the chat with the experts stream, that is something that we are, doing over time. And finally, our flagship event, the IR day, will be on the July 8. We will send you by our newsletter all the details about these three events. But let's jump in in today's topic. Today, we want to understand the factors that are considered in identifying the investors and prioritizing IR activities. And we will also give you some practical tips how to find new pool, of investors. And we have, with us, Patrick Yuges, director at Nasdaq IR Intelligence, and Ricardo Fava, corporate vice president, communication, ESG, and investor relation at DiaSorin. So thank you, Patrick. Thank you, Ricardo, for being here, and thank you to all the IR members that I see are connected. The first question goes to Ricardo. Companies must compete for capital and investors' time. At DiaSorin, what are the strategies that you have implemented to catch investor attention, and what tactics have been successful to uncover new kind of investors? Okay. Great. So first of all, thank you, Gabrielle. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you, everybody, attending this conference. We start with a very interesting question. Listen, Gabrielle. I think that it's very clear to all of us that the vast majority of investors are based in the usual suspect cities, so London and New York. So I will start from these two cities because I think that when you look at the road shows or conferences that you want to attend and the investors that you want to meet there, you need to really be sure who you want to talk to, who is purse who is participating from your company, and really to be able to cluster the kind of investors that you want really to meet. Because you can meet from very long term shareholders to hedge funds. You can meet, I mean, investors that are new to your story and investors that know you very well. They are with you since the very beginning. So and this is typically my experience of the shows and conferences in London and in New York. Having said that, there are not just these two cities in the world. So in fifteen years in in Yasorin, I realized that certainly you need to be there, but but you have also to discover other other cities, other places where you can really make your your your your job. And just to give you an example, I think that we have been one of the first Italian companies many years ago. I'm just quoting at at least ten years ago or even more to go to to go to Sweden, to go to Finland, to go to Norway. Now everybody goes to Nordics, but at the very beginning, there were very few Italian companies. I'm now just quoting it the Italian environment. No? Very few Italian companies going there. And what I realized was that investors there really appreciated the fact that you took a plane, you fly you you you get it for three hours and a half flying to to to to meet them. It was a sort of kind of respect to people that were not used to get people in in one way or the other like they do in London and New York. And the same story was pretty much applied for to other cities. We went to Lisbon. We went so we try to really differentiate our our approach and our reach. So certainly to give them time to Patrick for the other questions. I think that from a different viewpoint, what we did was first under so first understanding that money is everywhere, and you need to really deserve the same kind of level of quality and attention to any investors. Whatever it it the investor is based, certainly, you need to go into the big cities, the London, Paris, and New York. Road shows are typical for any listed company, but you really need to understand who you want to meet and really to cluster the kind of investors you want to meet. And third, as said, you need to diversify also your reach and trying to expand your your your your, I mean, your scope. This is what we have been doing in the last years. There are some years where you are more successful, when you get more investors interested in your company. I always I think that you need to be consistent with your IR role. You need to go there also when there are not so many requests because the fact that you get the investors used to see you means that when it's your time, you know, it's your the it's the time of your company, you will benefit from that. Thank you. So focus and cluster in the standard places as London, but also visit new places and and check and take the flights to show the the interest and and also to investors. Patrick, let let let's move on on this, especially considering the challenging in macroeconomics and geopolitical environment that we are facing today. What practical tips do you have for corporates and looking to announce their investor engagement activities? Great. Yeah. Thanks, Gabrielle. Yeah. Very interesting, Ricardo, and I'll I'll probably echo some of some of your your your thoughts and comments as well from a a Nasdaq perspective. But I think some of you know, adding to that, perhaps, many of our clients and many IROs really across Europe are adapting their investor engagement, their targeting activities, and have had to in sort of good times and bad. And I think today's macroeconomic environment, unfortunately, you know, has has really forced many companies in different sectors to really adapt as their fundamentals have changed. I mean, there's many, many examples. Right? The energy sector in particular at the moment, right, or companies heavily reliant on that sector. I think, you know, thinking of, you know, 2026 versus maybe a couple of years ago, companies in different sectors, for example, the consumer staples sector, which has actually been, you know, underperforming or or has faced different types of challenges recently versus maybe the financial sector, you know, the types of investors. And I think, you know, echoing Ricardo's comments, understanding who, you know, is the the target, who is the investor that you're trying to position your company with is is increasingly important because the names and the types of investors have changed. And I think many IROs have had to evolve and change along with that. I mean, I'll just and I have a few examples I'll show in a few minutes, but of some of my favorite undiscovered investors. But names like MFS, Capital Group, WCM in Laguna Beach or Jennison in in The US. Some of these really growth focused investors where, you know, have been, you know, very tech focused, for example, in the past. But as your company's fundamentals have changed, the profile of of those investors and the has you know, you see those movements in company shareholder basis. And then maybe, you know, on the flip side of that is, you know you know, I'll take the consumer staple sector as a as a good example where we've seen names like Harris Associates, Dodge and Cox, Causeway Mondrian, Pizenia, and Brandis. Those really deep, deep pools of value money that are really attracted to, you know, companies whose intrinsic valuation is is is below, you know, what it what it should be in the long run. So I think, IROs are are really thinking about, you know, who are the new firms and then, you know, really who are the people which we'll talk about in in today's today's webinar and then the new priorities. And, you know, maybe the last thing I'll throw in around, you know, in terms of of how companies are thinking about this is is one is, again, another very important factor is how you're allocating your IR team's time, but also, of course, your management's time to spend it with investors both efficiently and effectively. And I think, you know, I will I will talk about a hedge fund in a moment. But, you know, there are some of the more usual suspects who I'm sure many of you have already had a call with this week. So that sort of high turnover hedge funds who really, you know, request quite a lot of corporate access. So, naming they're not in the webinar, I can talk about them. But Millennium, Velazny, point seventy two, Citadel, you know, these are the biggest commission payers to the sell side. And, as many of you know, request a lot of time from companies and management. But, you know, are they the appropriate investors that that that you you know, need to spend that much time with? Because they tend to be very high turnover investors. So I think understanding what the opportunity understanding sort of what the dollar opportunity is when you're meeting an investor, that's really, really important. You know, things like and it sounds kind of basic, but what's their investment potential? What's the investor's turnover? What's their investment style? Does it align with our fundamentals? I think those are things that companies are being more strategic and thinking about. You know, and the last one, which is kind of an old, you know, an old thing, is it a read across? Right? Do they own your competitors? And there or, you know, there's other companies, for example, in the, you know, the employment sector, the temporary hiring sector where a lot of those those companies really suffer from a lot of read across meetings because investors use their meetings as like a a bellwether of the of the of the economy. Yeah. And maybe we can bring up my slide in a minute. We'll talk a little bit about some of the names that, you know, I think that are good examples. Think, you know, commenting on Ricardo's comments of the usual places, right? New York, London, Boston. Of course, the other comment I'll say about London is many of The US big houses, big asset management firms like MFS and Wellington now, of course, you can meet with. If you're an Italian company, you should most likely be meeting the contacts based in London. Because many of those big US East Coast firms have London offices with European PMs based there. But maybe if we can bring up the one slide I prepared for today, and we will share that with everyone as well. You know? And I I thought I would just highlight. Of course, from my side, it's it's it's smaller than I than I was hoping for the webinar. But hopefully, it's bigger for for all of you. But I think, know, I wanted to highlight a couple of investors here. You know, RailPen is an interesting one in London. These are, you know, some of the names of, you know, outside of the traditional, locations, which I wonder if I can actually make it larger on my side. Maybe not. Oh, hold on. Maybe I can. Can. Here we go. There we go. Perfect. So RailPan is a London based asset manager that many of you maybe have met, but, you know, they're $20,000,000,000 equity assets under management. They're London based, and I think what's interesting about them is they, in the past couple of years, have shifted to a much more internal approach with a dedicated team of fund managers there. They are very focused. They're a long term investor, very focused on growth stories. So very much, you know, a team that if your company is a more of a growth story, then I think RailPen is an is an excellent target to engage with that you you may not know. Mathias Effert is the head of the fundamental equities team at RailPen based in London. And a lot of their money has moved from kind of externally managed to internal management. One of my, personal favorite, hedge funds is Select Equity in New York, 24,000,000,000 equity assets under management. They, target companies with high returns, high invested capital returns, right, strong free cash flow, a strong management teams, and, you know, are based in New York City. So that is an investor. You do travel to New York to me. They're the they're a hedge fund, but they're, you know, different than some of the other, I would say, higher turnover hedge funds. Again, very growth focused in some of the context who are most frequently meeting European companies we listed here. Maybe one a couple more to name that I think are interesting takeaways to think about. La Financia de Le Chiquier is a Paris based GARP investor, growth at a reasonable price, very strong ESG focus. So plays well for lots of Italian companies and and their ESG story or European companies broadly speaking. They are a very high meet very high meetings activity investor. They have more than 1,500 company meetings per year, so they're a very active investor, really entirely active in terms of their investment approach. And I thought well, I thought I would highlight them on today's meeting because they're you know, they have a very nice, very good mid and small cap European equity strategy. So they do invest in Italian, of course, large caps, but also have a specific team dedicated to mid and small cap companies, which some of, the the attendees may be representing mid and small caps. Stephanie Bobiceff is the head of mid and small cap, equities at La Finonceo de la Gicchier. Interesting Paris target. And then maybe last one for me that I I you know, again, some of the diamonds in the rough. Beryl Hanley is a 35,000,000,000 Texas based investor with a value approach income value, actually, focusing on the potential of a company's valuation to return to a fair level. So it's interesting because their global equity global value equity strategy is is 15% invested in continental European companies, so excluding The UK. It's a a fair amount of money invested in European equities. And, again, based on some of the meetings data that we analyze at Nasdaq, there's a a couple of contacts there that would be appropriate targets to meet with. Again, outside of the traditional pockets of money. And it's certainly something we look at when we do our investor engagement targeting analysis for our clients. How these investors' fundamentals align with your fundamentals along with who are the right people that you can suggest to your brokers or even without brokers, target yourself. So I hope that was interesting. We will share these slides with everyone who attends after the webinar. So don't worry about getting out your camera or taking notes. Just enjoy the webinar and we'll share it with you after. And I'll hand back over to Gabrielle. Thank you, Patrick. I got something that you that you say that was on ownership of competitors. But this introduced me to the next question because identifying our shareholders and competitor shareholders in Italy is not is not always straightforward. It's actually a mess. Shareholders' data is partially visible at the AGM and when companies pay the dividend. But how does data compare to the actual shareholder base of the Italian companies? Yeah. Thanks, Gabriel. It's a it's a great question, and it's yeah. Well, it's a mess. Or I'd say it's challenging. So, you know, several years ago now, the shareholder rights directive, which is a directive, not a law. Actually, that's important to emphasize as well because the the downside of a directive is that there's no stick. You know, in English, say carrot and stick. Well, there's no stick, unfortunately, for the with the directive versus a law where there would be a penalty. But the the shareholder rights directive still wasn't you know, has been adopted across the EU. Right? All EU countries, including Italy. And the shareholder rights directive was implemented in most markets without a threshold. But in Italy, it's important to be aware of that the threshold was applied of 0.5% of shares outstanding and above. So and that's on the fund level. Think I maybe when they originally thought of the shareholder rights directive, they thought it might be on the firm investor level because then you'd have higher numbers of investors above 0.5. But actually, it's on the funds or beneficial owner level. So, again, making the visibility for shareholder identification or what we call shareholder analysis at Nasdaq more challenging for Italian companies than your competitors in based in France or in Germany where there was no threshold applied. To be clear, Italy is not alone. We work in markets like Austria and and Netherlands where the simil the same threshold was applied. But I think, you know, when it comes to and, you know, we do meet with some companies who say, oh, yeah. We know their shareholders from the AGM. And, yes, of course, the AGM is a very, very long list of of many, many names. And you could easily perhaps pick out, you know, an American funds or an MFS fund or Fidelity fund, right, quite clearly from the AGM data. But I think what's really important about the AGM and the voting data is to understand what's a beneficial owner. So pension funds, retirement plans, all of those US, and there's a lot of them on the beneficial owner on the AGM. They vote they have the voting rights, but they don't manage their shares. And the shares are managed by other institutional investors like BlackRock or State Street or MFS or AllianceBernstein. So at Nasdaq, on a really basic level, we'll talk a little bit more about this. I know Ricardo has some examples. You know, we, of course, are mapping the the beneficial owners to the correct investment manager. And that's crucial for IR because you need to meet with the investment manager who's making the decision to buy or sell the shares, not with a pension fund in Nebraska or Illinois who doesn't make the the decision to buy or sell your shares. So we, on a really kind of basic level, are doing that, and we leverage the fact at Nasdaq that we do this work across every market. That we're other markets where we have no threshold or we have, you know, even better mapping between the investment manager and the pension funds. So I I would just caution, maybe if you're, if you're thinking that the AGM voting data is your shareholder base, it's it is your beneficial owner base, but it's not your and maybe that's useful for the AGM, but it's not always useful for IR. And and, you know, I I I know I think going beyond that, why, you know, some of the other insights we provide, you know, again, how saturated is the holding? And I know Ricardo might mention some of this, but, you know, where is is the investor buying and selling your sector? Again, that that that leads to a more strategic, discussion than the but, yes, the identification is the first step in getting those funds and beneficial owners mapped correctly. And then you can have the more interesting strategic discussion around where is there opportunity in the shareholder base. So I hope that was helpful. It is. And and and if I understand right, it means that we, we need to have two maps. One for, the AGM, so for the voting activities, and the other one for analyst and and and the portfolio managers to meet for the decisions. Cool. Exactly. Let's move to Ricardo again, and I will enter a little bit more on your practices. What tools which tools do you use at DiaSorin to track your shareholder base and to uncover new pools of new pools of capital? Let me recall some some thoughts from Patrick because I think they were very powerful. Okay? So first, when you had when you are running the AGM, you're just making a snapshot of the existing shareholder basis. And the same same when you go through the share IDs with any provider. Okay? So I think that more it's like having the balance sheet. You have just a picture of what it is now your shareholder's basis. The real the real value, my opinion, is to have a flow. So what happened to your investors? What is happening to investors that you were used to meet and are not anymore in your shareholder base? Or as Patrick was mentioning, who are the shareholders that I never met and that they had to meet because maybe they are invested in my peers. So I think that the the the so when when I started twenty years ago, this job, I think I've been in the ER, it was very funny because I was just calling the analysts, and I was asking them, guys, can you please, I mean, organize and roadshows in New York, in London? And I was pretty much passive. So I was going to meet who they wanted me to meet. I was not going to meet who I wanted and I needed really to meet. You know? So it's not against banks, of course. But, you know, you understand very vividly that when you talk to a bank or to another, they are just they have their I mean, their contracts with the funds. And so you're meeting not all the investors that probably you need to meet. So I think that going into becoming a little more sophisticated and started to go with share share order analysis, and we are running two, three share share IDs per year now plus plus the AGM. We have pretty much every quarter a visibility of who are the current shareholders, who are the shareholders that are not invested in our company but in our peers. And so when I organize with my my team the the the roadshow or the next conference, I'm asking banks that I want to meet fund a, fund b, and fund c. This is regarding what they want me to meet or who they want me to meet. Okay? So I think this is a big shift that every company should do. So be not being so passive, but being more active and as an IR IROR. But being an IR, it doesn't matter the level you are. I think that our duty is really to understand who we are going to meet. So I think that the shared ID really completely changed our approach. It it it made it more much more sophisticated. I don't want I don't want to advertise any any any provider, but, of course, we are now hosted by Nasdaq, and Nasdaq is is certainly one of the best providers for shared IDs. And what you can appreciate when you go into the details that these guys are able to provide us is that you can really fragment the the the current the different shareholders you have. You understand who is value, who is GARP, who is growth, who is hedge funds. You can understand your level, the level of exposure of your company compared to the health care sector peers or the Italian companies. So you understand maybe, hey. Gabrielle is going to meet probably much more French investors because I'm I'm I mean, my my percentage is lower than the new. So I can call you and ask you who are you going to meet. So I think that there is a really powerful tool to debate internally who you really need to meet and to be really much more strategic. So I think that the value that you we have to deserve to share ID is big because we I saw the slide that Patrick was showing. I think the the financial that she gave is make making 1,500 meetings per year, but they have a team in the sorry. There are two people in investor relations team, and we have met 350 investors in a year. So that that is a lot, and I think that all the Italian companies attending this webinar are pretty much in line with our numbers. So, again, you we need really to identify who it is worth to speak with, and the the the share ID is the tool is the tool, so to summarize, to decide strategically who you want to meet or who you have never met, decide and influence your banks, the analysts you are working with to, I mean, create a roadshow that is tailored for you and not tailored for them and to be much more strategic and in understanding also why some investors are buying your peers and are not buying you or the opposite. Why they are buying you and they're not looking at the piece because you can also start to think about the if if you are properly evaluated by the market from a peer's perspective and multiples perspective. So it's a very powerful tool. Thank you, Ricardo. And with this tool, at the end, I think you should be able to, prioritize, the investors, but also the time of the management. So how do you consider the time of the management in evaluating your access strategy? Is there you mentioned new investors, old investors. So the the you have any practical rule for defining which investors are you going to meet with the CEO or with the CFO or the IR only? Okay. If it's for me a question, the answer is listen. Before being on the sell side, I worked for five years in the buy side. So be be before becoming an IR, I was working on a on a family office buying companies. And I remember that it was very, very evident that to complete the due diligence, you had many check marks. No? And the final check marks was, did you speak with the CEO? K? That was the last one. K? Coming to the sell side now. I think that as IR professionals, we have the duty to speak with all the funds and dedicate the same amount of time, and by the way, fighting for one hour of attention in a year. Because I mean and it's I'm not just competing with my diagnostic peers. I'm also compete we I'm competing with all of you, and you are competing with me as well because from the other side, the buy side doesn't have time to speak with all of us. So need to be very powerful and good as an IR to be interesting enough, okay, to catch the attention of the of the investor in the first one hour meeting that is usually the introductory meeting. You know, the tell me something about your business meeting. And this is when you need to start. This is the. Then when you are able to catch the attention, then you have the deep dice with the two, three, four, five meetings, and there is a moment in time where the investor investors need to talk to your CFO first and then to the your CEO so that their time is so precious and so rare now to be dedicated to this financial street that you really need to understand when is the time to have your c level, the c suite to meet your investors. So long story short, the first part of the of the job is on us. And it should be on us, and it's us I mean, from the starting competing with the of Snap or competing with the of Apple. I don't I I I don't matter. It doesn't matter which company I'm referring to. When I'm able to catch attention of the funds and I'm able to gather the the the fund involved into the story, then there is a moment where you need to have your CEO coming. And, again, the the the shared ID is very powerful in in that because when you see that there is an investor that is I mean, who is invested in other peers and is not new, maybe not go there with your CEO. You start first to make the job, education, understanding why they are not investing in you, and then you go with the CEO at the end of the story. You know? So, again, it's I think that the is a super powerful tool to really make our job as investor relations better. And choose which person of the management is the right one to meet an investor at that specific time, if it's, you or or or the management, the top management. The similar question also to Patrick. So which factors should companies considers when prioritizing management time? Yeah. Okay. It's it's great. Good to thanks for all the comments. Interesting, Ricardo, your thoughts. I think one of the things we we talk to investor relations, and I think about and you have to keep in mind is this topic of conversation to conversion. It's something we talk about in our investor engagement activities. And you do need to keep in mind that and I think, Ricardo, you framed it nicely that that first meeting is gonna be followed by four or five more discussions. Right? More in-depth because the immediate sort of position increases even if, you know, x y z investor seems like a great target. It's certainly not guaranteed that and and that's really due to several factors. Right? Macro factors, I think you have to keep in mind the current, you know, sector downturns for some sectors, geopolitical tensions. Right? Micro, are they rebalancing their portfolio? Right? Is the stock valuation entry point the right one for the investor? And then, you know, even more, know, internal policies and approvals. Right? Yeah. These are the things that the buy side has to factor in when they initiate a position. So I think there's those factors that that sort of conversation to conversion to keep in mind in in investor relations, especially when you're meeting one of those investors who might be, you know, heavily invested in your sector and not in you. So it's more of a a a target. And then I think the other factors that, you know, are more practical, you know, US versus Europe. Right? Which cities? Right? Is is New York, Boston, but is there are there other cities? There's the West Coast. We spend a lot of time talking to clients about, you know, the West Coast. Is it worth visiting the West Coast? And certainly, are some very big value investors, Dodging Cox, Brandis, Causeway, all on the West Coast. You know, is is the first meeting a virtual meeting? Right? So especially with investors, COVID changed things a lot. Right? With investors who are those long term shareholders that you know, you can easily do an update with them virtually with management for thirty minutes and forty five minutes and be much more efficient potentially. You know, IR versus c suite travel. Again, something that a lot of IROs think about and and and try to weigh up. I think maybe one other topic we we spend a lot of time talking to companies about is around conferences, which I know we don't have a specific question around conferences. But, you know, what are the that we do work with our clients a lot around understanding what are the best conferences in your sector. We look at factors like the investors who attend that conference. Do they have a more of a short term or a long term investment horizon? What is the purchasing potential of the investors that, you know, you're meeting with at a at a conference? Certainly, conferences, you know, comes out when we survey our investor relations as one of the most effective targeting, you know, approaches, and it can be very efficient. But also, you know, I think we have a question coming up about conferences next for Ricardo. But, you know, the some sectors health care is a good one. There's a lot of conferences in the healthcare sector. So what are the right ones and who are the right people to be pinpointing? I think, you know, those are the types of factors that I think companies are being more strategic and thinking about. Yeah, Patrick. But let me let me join to what you just said because I think it's very relevant now. There are several health care conferences, say, in the world. So which I mean, the the question sometimes is which which conference should we attend? Because, I mean, there there is not infinite time. And I think that, again, a a good tip that I'm giving to everybody, if, you know, if if if we are not already used to that, is going through fact side chats. So I think that the CEO time is so precious that the best thing to do is having your CEO talking with the analyst. Forty five, fifty minutes. A conversation a conversation between the two of them with questions coming just to the analyst, sort of plan a recession. And you have the strategic setting, okay, okay, of your of your results, after your results, of your company, da da da. Okay? This is the time that should be they fully dedicated dedicated to the CEO. After that, you can join any health care conference or going through their roadshows. Usually, when we go to the health care conferences, in the last four, five years, what I had experienced is there is a turnover. This is unbelievable. I was used to meet, you know, these guys, and they are not anymore there. So the risk sometimes is that you're fell in you fall in love with the name of the fund, but when you meet the fund, you are meeting different people. And our job is a people job. It's all about people. It's about trust between us and people. So I think that my if we if I can give an advice, the best way to use the time of the your CEO is fact side chats and maybe the biggest, most relevant funds in your shareholders' basis. Okay? That's for sure for the CEO. Then if you have a CFO who is willing to come with you that is very good, you can, I mean, split some road shows and conferences with with him or her depending who, I mean, who is your CFO and being a little bit more on the road? But at the end of the story, I think that also the CFO should be a CFO, and it should not become an IRO. So the CFO, you need to use the time of the CFO maybe 50% of the times, 50% of the conferences you're attending. And then going down to the IR team, and now here, I know that there are companies in Italy with more than three, four, five investors, investor leaders. There are some where there is just one. So, really, depending on the size of your team, you need to go on the street and go into all the conferences that you can. And, potentially, if you have the luxury to to to be more than one to delegate and to split the team, so in the same after the q one, q two results, there is the usual first week in London, then go to The US, and the second week, the third week, you go to other cities. No. Why that? You can make a contemporary roadshow in Paris and in New York because you can dedicate to your team a city being at the very same time in another city and maximizing the the impact of your storytelling in one week. That's my advice. So there are many very reputable health care conferences. I like more to spend my time in the roadshows with the c level and more and more time myself and my IR team in the conferences without the c level because sometimes it's a waste of time for them. Thank you, Ricardo. Patrick, what's your view on targeting investors directly? We without the use and the help of brokers. How can corporate. better catch investor attention without the analysts? Yeah. That's a that's a great question. And I I know I'll keep it kinda brief on that one. But I think there's a key thing, and it's it's about being creative and proactive. And creative is probably the most important word there as well as well, they're both important. But I think, know, what are companies doing? And I'm thinking more across from the IROs when we across Europe from a European perspective. I think, you know, targeting investors without broker support, you know, there are this technology at Nasdaq. We have a tool called Connect IR, which allows our our clients to potentially invite a group of investors or sell side analysts also. If you wanna do a sell side analyst lunch or or a meeting or a post result sell side meeting, you can use technology to invite them to attend that meeting. So there there is outreach that you can that you can do. But I think in terms of creativity, I think ideas like showcasing, you know, divisional management, regional management, capital markets days, of course. Right? You know, super important. I was on the phone with the head of investor relations just two days ago, and, you know, they are doing a big capital markets day in the second half of the year and are doing a perception study. She she said, absolutely. We're doing a perception study. Although we understand the story and investors view, what are the the nuances of the story that we really wanna focus in on for the Capital Markets Day? I think another thing we hear in terms of, you know, catching investors' attention without the support of brokers is things like innovation days or site visits are super popular, for the buy side. Right? If you have a new factory or a new plant or a production area that you really wanna showcase. Thematic events are very popular in the healthcare sector, for example, where you're focusing on one product line. So this really helps investors to understand maybe a less understood part of your business. And I think that's that's that's really, really helpful. And, of course, Nasdaq, we help our clients to gauge this through our global investor perception practice where we have specialists who also can support our clients to understand the view of current holders, non holders, or even former shareholders. So it's a it's a all different audiences. But, again, creative and proactive. Those are my tips. Thank you. And now back to Ricardo and move to something younger than us, artificial intelligence. There's a lot of news about the artificial intelligent tools and the potential time saving for they can they can bring to our job. Are you using any tools in in the investor relations today, and which opportunities do you see for the future? Wow. Okay. AI. AI is a big yeah. So I'm at let's start that there is a binary vision on AI. I'm a fan of AI, so I just I need to confess. Me? too. I think that I I tell you a story. More than ten years ago, we were one of the first Italian companies to develop an iPad application called tell me something about your business. No? So when we were going out, we were now using hard copies of presentations. We just did this app really to allow us to better explain our business show no. Not using hands like I'm doing now as a typical Italian guy, but using an app. Just explaining and showing Biblily with a in a pictorial way how the business works. And it was very powerful, but, of course, now it's dead. Okay? Now you we have AI. So my first advice to the companies I'm managing also the digital communication of my company, and I tell you the data that is very powerful. We noticed that more than 40%, four zero, of of accesses to our website are not coming from human people, are coming from the chat GPT or Copilot or Gemini of the world. That is telling you that, first of all, your investor relations page should be different. It's not any more sufficient to have the usual presentations, PDF, or support in the in the in your IR website, but you need to work, and we are doing that on a on a what is called ISO, AI AISO, so artificial intelligence search optimization. Therefore, you need to write the language behind the the the the the front end with in a way that is AI friendly so that when people look for information and data on your company through the Charge GPT, they you know that they with the these bots will get access to your website and will find your website AI friendly so the answer would be correct. Second so this is the first part of of I mean, what we are doing now from an external viewpoint using AI. I, internally, honestly, I don't believe in AI writing the press release for you. This is bullshit. Sorry. But I honestly I think that there is a value in the human being that is cannot at least for now, cannot be surpassed by any AI tool. And, also, because there is a the human touch and the human comprehension of your business and the way investors are looking at you that is crucial and cannot be substituted up to now from the AI. What you we think that there is a value. And, again, this is the second AI project we have in the story. It is having a sort of big database. Okay? We did it with with Copilot because as many corporate I mean, you cannot use the Charge GPT or Gemini. You need to be inside the limited environment that is given by Copilot. And we what we do is pretty getting all the broker research that we get on us or on the our peers or public data we find in the website, and we just put everything into this big database. So there is a bot. There is an LLM that is getting and reading for you all these reports. So whenever you are going to have a roadshow and you don't remember what you said or what Alan said about, you know, the Middle East Conflict, what you said about it, or what you said about China, or what you said about the product ABC, you just simply call I mean, open the the this internal tool and get information immediately. Or your CEO or CFO is asking you, okay. Give me a comparison between our the product a that we have and that that the same and your I mean, the competitive product that your piece have. It's very simple. Go there. You ask your Copilot friend, please make me a comparison table and give me the results in two seconds. So this is the the way I see the the value of AI. I think I I I when I was a kid, I had in mind that a a sentence that was romantic high-tech. And I think that we are be we were we, as IAROs, we need to become more and more romantic high-tech. Romantic meaning that there is a part that cannot be substituted, and it's us, the human being, but certainly high-tech because not being AI friendly is like being blind today in in in the world. I I see, and I and I agree. And I found it works very well on what you say, the less well on numbers. They sometimes make some mistakes. But I think will be, I hope, solved very soon. Let me remind also to the attendees that there's the chance to send the q and a. You can use the panel on the right. We have already received a couple, but I think you have the chance to put at least another one we should be we should have time. The next question is for Patrick. What type of what types of data and analytics are available to support corporates in building their strategy and their engagement program? And there's the possibility that the artificial intelligence will help in regard of this in the future. Yeah. You know, I I think we're talking about AI, and I'll probably pick up on on some of the AI comments from from Ricardo because it's a really big focus for our business at Nasdaq and also in our products for our Nasdaq IR intelligence clients. So one stat around AI and how you know, that is the topic du jour, as you say, in in investor relations these days. In our annual pulse survey where we interview or we we survey hundreds of IROs globally, this year sorry. Last year, so 2025, 51% of respondents 51% of IROs said that they incorporate AI in their daily work flow. That was from last year, and that's up 30% that's up from 30% in 2024. So there is a big increase of AI adoption from investor relations globally and similar numb similar numbers from our our our audience of investor relations professionals across Europe. You know, I think what's what's interesting about AI, and I I totally agree with Ricardo's comments around it's not gonna take away the telling your story, the human connection, the people business of investor relations. But it is going to make some of the more manual work in investor relations more efficient. And so we already have several AI features available that our investor relations clients are using to summarize, for example, their meetings notes in a closed safe environment. Or summarize sell side research, which, you know or transcripts, previously might have taken several hours. Now you can summarize your competitors' transcripts in a matter of minutes. So I I think there's a lot of of really exciting AI developments for IROs that are already available. They're certainly available to our clients. The most and I'll probably, you know, end with with one other one that we've just recently launched and it's available to our clients as well. It's called Analyze Investors. So it's an sort of an interactive AI driven approach to ownership. So it is actually I know we're talking about AI to summarize words, but also now we're using AI to summarize structured ownership data. So leveraging your shareholder analysis data, for example, to understand, you know, using AI to understand who's been buying or selling. Right? You know, how what has changed in terms of my investor base versus my peers. And I think what's, you know, more exciting about AI coming in the future are some of these, you know, I'm just I have a couple of example questions. Imagine you can say, you know, ask again, this is via Nasdaq IR Insight, which is, again, a closed secure environment to use AI. That's also super important to using AI. Right? It's not in the public domain. It's it's your private ownership data. You know, prepare me for my meeting with BNP Paribas Investment Partners. Right? Or, you know, Azimut. I'm meeting Azimut. Prepare me with my meeting prepare me for my meeting with Azimut this afternoon using AI, which will summarize, for example, peer ownership, your meeting notes, the how many shares do they own and, like and, you know, that's super powerful. And, again, it's not gonna take away from the human part of investor relations, but, hopefully, you know, my view is it'll make our jobs more efficient, hopefully even more interesting. So some of the manual things that you have to kind of sort of search in several different places or pull many different reports together, Again, all coming together using AI. So there's a lot of exciting developments coming. And it's a pretty exciting time to be in investor relations. And, Patrick, if I if I can add on that, I think that's one another advice is really understanding that that the most important thing with AI is the your ability to prompt properly. Because in the end, if you are just making the wrong question, you will get the wrong wrong answer. No. Absolutely. It's g go. Yep. Garbage in, garbage out. So that's it. So in the end and if you want to apply AI to IR and you learn how to make AI agents, so the agentic AI, you can really have an a an AI agent looking for data, an AI agent looking for, I don't know, any news about your this product. And then after you have said, I don't know, ten, fifteen different agents, you can make a a core an an a a an AI agent coordinating the work of your sub agents. And in really one click, You get every morning what's going on on your market or about your peers, what is what is happening on the market. And I heard that some funds, by the way, are now using and creating themselves AI agents proprietary, of course, to really move or interpret any any word that is given by the company so they can read through very me immediately your first line of the your broker of your PR and understand if this word match is matching with other words said by other companies and giving the and telling them that if it's a positive or even or negative signal, and they buy and sell through algorithm immediately Yep. on a word, a single word. And this is just given by AI. So better for AR, AI roles, AR professionals to understand that there is a value on us, but there is a value also for for funds and investors. So when you write a press release, this is it. You have to write it thinking that what you write will be read anyway by an AI agent that will interpret it what you're you're you're writing. So I'm not a fan of the copilot writing for you a PR, but certainly you can use the your your agent to to understand after you have written the PR if the PR is AI friendly and AI agentic AI friendly so that the impact on the market when you will issue the PR will not be dramatic. It will be positive. The, how to improve the investor engagement, and, you mentioned about the possibility to structure your and and use DIE to evaluate the ownership data. But there's a second part of the question I I want to ask you to, Patrick, and, try to be, very practical, giving the hint to, to Stefano. May we use the artificial intelligence to target the right investors or to help us in the exercise of targeting new investors? Yes. It's the short and there's more to come in that area. I think it's the next area of of AI development that will be, at Nasdaq, at least, building into some of our our our platform. So, again, the ability to, for example, add fundamental screens. So at you know, of course, it's quite easy to target based on peers, right, which is kind of the old fashioned way of targeting. Who owns my peers? Who owns my but, you know, from evaluation standpoint, what are building a a group of fundamental peers is super important to investor targeting. And AI, again, will help us to in the future, I think, to do more targeting DIY or, of course, also our analysts who who support our clients in our investor engagement practice to to leverage AI more. But, again, that fundamental peer group's very important. Like, you know, again, because of the think of the funds. They either invest in mid caps or large caps or companies with a certain dividend or earnings per share growth profile. Getting your fundamentals to align helps you target those generalist pools of capital outside of just your peer group. So I think there's more and more to come on the AI tools for targeting. No tools ready from the shelf there we can use today. I think the new our new investor analyze investors module already in Nasdaq, would say, yes, brings you halfway there because it's it's? helping you interrogate your current investor base, yep, using. using AI. Noah, I have a question, but I ask you to choose who to answer. It's from Laura Panceri. What would be, your suggestion for a mid Italian company to engage with Asian investors, Hong Kong, Singapore? Any suggestion on that? I can start, and I don't know if Ricardo has anything. You know, Asia is an interesting region. It's a really, really big place with little with different pools of money. And the example I always use is Japan, which on paper looks like an excellent target. But, the amount of money, first of all, that's allocated to European equities, all of a sudden shrinks that number quite dramatically. And then the amount that's actively managed shrinks it even much, much more. So I do think Asia is, a big market. It's tends to be more successful, I would say, larger cap companies. And it's more importantly, companies already with strong business presence in that region. So your products are well known. So, for example, consumers, the the consumer, discretionary sector, right, that in in Italy, which we have a lot of leading consumer discretionary companies, you know, those where their brands are well known. Again, I I also think it probably, you know, it it favors maybe larger companies. The other one is to understand the sector bias. Right? If you're an infrastructure company, then Australia is a really good market for you. So there's, I think you need to be selective in terms of which opportunities there are. But, yes, there is opportunities for European companies in Asia. I think it's understanding your profile and whether or not also, you know, the money is managed from there. Because sometimes you can be confusing. A lot of the Middle Eastern money, for example, is actually externally managed by other investors. So again, it's it's quite company specific and also depends on your sector. And if I can add to to Laura, when you go through the shared ID, you really understand that when you talk to any name I don't want to name any fund, but when you talk to a big fund, you think that these guys are sharing notes. They don't. So when you are talking with the fund a in London and it's it's a part and you think that the parent company, you is a very big one, they talk to each other, They don't do that. So you need really to understand that when you talk to fund a in London and the fund b in London of the same party company in New York of the same party company, you're talking to different fund fund managers with different ideas, different horizons, different investment strategies. So it's very difficult to go to Asia because it really depends on the sector. But I think that I know where Larry is working. So I think that, for instance, your company is certainly a company that is of of interest for Asian companies. And I go back to the very first answer I gave. Money is everywhere. It's our duty as an IR to understand and expand our shareholder base. It's also going outside from the the the the the the I mean, the the usual suspects, the cities where we go. Everybody's going London and New York. So take a flight. Go try and go to Singapore, Hong Kong, or Tokyo, and let's see. Maybe you the first time you go there, you don't see anybody getting back or invest in your company. But if you go one, once then you get other, I mean, follow-up calls, then sometimes you see these investors getting in into their shareholder basis. And, again, the share ID is the proof to the CEO that you are not just making a tourism. Okay? But you're going really to create a new place where investors are looking at you. So just go. I have the very last question for you, but, because we are running out of time, I ask you to just answer in one single minute even if the topics can can last for ages. How to engage with because today, we we we talk about active investors, how to engage with the passive. But please stay in one minute each. We it's another topic, Gabriela, for another webinar, I think, because it's. a tip so difficult to do in one minute. But it's a good one. Yes. You can engage and you should engage with your passive investors. Right? So most of the time, you should be engaging with Vanguard, Dimensional, and BlackRock, State Street Global Advisors in London as an Italian company with the investment stewardship teams. And the topic is different than your typical IR roadshow, and it also has to be arranged by yourselves, not by brokers because they so you need to arrange that. Speaking of doing it on your own, you have to arrange those meeting on your own. And the topics are around ESG. In So particular with the big g, for example, for Vanguard, it's it's a big g. But all of those passive those big investors, you can engage with and you should engage with, most of the time, here in London. From my side, in ten seconds, work on your IR section in the website and make it also passive investors friendly. And so allow them to find the the data and storytelling you want them to find without speaking to them directly. Thanks to both of you. The last three things I have to say, the first first is is thank you to Ricardo and Patrick and all the people that are connected for this very interesting hour. I have to remind you that the IR day, the flagship event of the association, will be on the July 8. And I want to recall before the launch two words that I have in mind, two quotes of the event today. The first one is our job is all about our people is all about people. Sorry. And the second one was romantic ITEC. So I will, stay the day with these two statements. Thank you, Ricardo, and thank you, Patrick, for your inspirations. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, and everybody.