Anna Vikentiev and David C. Collins, of Catalyst Global recently shared 7 ways to sharpen quarterly press releases on their blog and on IRmagazine.com. 

Vikentiev and Collins reviewed 84 quarterly releases issued on three summer days in 2016.

They focused on headlines – the point of discovery for any quarterly release – and what became clear is that most companies avoid discussion of their numerical results, underlying trends or drivers in their headline. Most also opt not to explain the nature of what their company does beyond providing the company name.

In general, the headlines they reviewed provided little information or perspective that might help their company story become discovered by NEW investors.

Vikentiev and Collins provided the following recommendations to optimize the reach of quarterly releases – without impacting existing investor dialogues:

1. Remove obvious, empty-calorie words – Replace “empty-calorie words” with value-added content such as the date and/or time of the webcast. Investors are busy so get to the point, make things easy for them.

2. Add a phrase in your headline to clarify your sector/industry – If your company name does not clearly explain your business, you should clarify your sector/industry to increase the odds your news will be discovered by editors, investors, reporters, blogs, other industry participants and search engines interested in your sector.

3. Use a financial measure(s) – Use things like revenue, net income, EPS, and so on in your headline to provide a clear window on the scale of your business and valuation, relative to readily available share price/market cap data, to help readers assess your story’s relevance to their strategy.

4. Add an element of performance direction –  Allowing investors to easily determine your performance direction can attract new investors with appropriate investment styles (growth, special situations, turnaround, value, and so on).

5. Explain a key driver behind the change of the measure – Explain what is driving your results so that busy investors can more easily understand the reason for your results. 

6. Include key elements of your conference call comments – Including key elements from your conference call in your press release (not just on the call) is important because conference calls have a fraction of a release’s reach and engagement, particularly with retail investors. 

7. Include comprehensive financial statements – 13 percent of releases surveyed did not take this simple step to push their financials to investment portals on a global basis. This is where investors may first discover you. Further, if your performance is strong and the numbers show it clearly, a comparison table with percentages is a great addition to a successful release: 56 percent of releases surveyed did not take advantage of this opportunity.

For much more detailed analysis (included examples of how to implement these strategies), check out the full post on Catalyst Global’s website HERE.