Tag: Institutional Investors

Communicating with Investors: A CEO Handbook

Communicating with Investors: A CEO Handbook

Below is the high-level outline for our next book to be published as an Amazon Kindle book later this summer. The book will be focused on CEO communications with public company investors. I. Define Your Company What We Do & How We Do It How We Create Customer Value How We Create A Sustainable Competitive … Continue reading Communicating with Investors: A CEO Handbook

Don’t Count On M&A To Bail You Out

Don’t Count On M&A To Bail You Out

CEOs and Institutional Investors should not count on strategic acquirers or PE firms to bail out underperforming stocks (or private company holdings for that matter). Not only is the cost of capital significantly higher for would-be acquirers, but target company revenue and profitability forecasts have substantially less visibility and therefore more risk today than they … Continue reading Don’t Count On M&A To Bail You Out

CEO Behavior & Opportunity Cost

CEO Behavior & Opportunity Cost

CEOs ought to operate their companies in such a manner that their integrity and work ethic may not be questioned. Take the example of Unity (ticker: U) CEO John Riccitiello who is named in this lawsuit. If the allegations are true, it speaks to horrible behavior on Mr. Riccitiello's part. Setting the allegations aside for … Continue reading CEO Behavior & Opportunity Cost

Investors Should Ask More of Their Management Teams

Investors Should Ask More of Their Management Teams

One of the great distortions caused by the joint fiscal and monetary policy of 2020 and 2021 is that equities and the lowest-rated non-investment grade credits are two of the all too rare places where investors may earn a return. Savers and Fixed Income investors be damned. Many companies are enjoying their stocks trading at … Continue reading Investors Should Ask More of Their Management Teams

Where Is The Gold Rally?

Where Is The Gold Rally?

Gold prices ought to have climbed higher given the amount of money printing that took place in 2020 and that is likely to continue. What happened? Additional debt-funded "stimulus", QE and accompanying asset inflation should have pushed gold prices higher. After all, gold is a safe haven. What gives? (view a chart of the spot … Continue reading Where Is The Gold Rally?

Insider Selling & Share Repurchases – A Corporate Governance Problem

Insider Selling & Share Repurchases – A Corporate Governance Problem

It is a corporate governance problem when insiders sell shares in the face of share repurchase programs. Take the example of Copart (ticker: CPRT). CPRT insiders have not purchased any shares over the past several years, yet they have done plenty of selling. Further, CPRT share repurchases helped support the stock while insiders sold (see … Continue reading Insider Selling & Share Repurchases – A Corporate Governance Problem

When Evaluating Institutional Investors Ferraris Are A Red Flag.

When Evaluating Institutional Investors Ferraris Are A Red Flag.

One of the services we provide at CEORater includes a CEO Personality Profile derived from Natural Language Processing applied to earnings call transcripts. Research out of Stanford University - Charles OReilly and David Larcker - demonstrates a correlation between CEO Personality and company outcomes. Separate efforts apply similar analytic methods toward evaluating institutional investors. Institutional … Continue reading When Evaluating Institutional Investors Ferraris Are A Red Flag.

Don’t Give Investors A Reason to Say “No”

Don’t Give Investors A Reason to Say “No”

Investors Allocate Premium Valuations to That Which They Understand My theory is that institutional investors implicitly penalize complexity. I base my theory largely on 23 years of capital markets experience and intuition and admittedly have little data to support it. I believe that investors will invest a dollar in Company A assuming that "A" has … Continue reading Don’t Give Investors A Reason to Say “No”

Every Company Is A Content Company

Every Company Is A Content Company

Notice anything about the above image? It looks like a Facebook feed and five of the nine content pieces (only three are fully visible), are videos. The image is a screen capture from Goldman Sachs' homepage - part of a modernization/ outreach effort under new Goldman CEO David Solomon. Personally I've noticed that companies are … Continue reading Every Company Is A Content Company

Share Your Story with Us

Share Your Story with Us

Many of our readers are Technology CEOs and institutional investors. If you wish to tell your company's story, or a portfolio company story let us know. Beginning in 2019 we plan to occasionally profile Technology companies in these pages and on our CEORater Podcast. Send me a note directly at jmaietta@ceorater.com. Thanks for reading!   … Continue reading Share Your Story with Us