Nasty Question Quarterly Prep Sessions

Intensive Readiness Testing for High‑Stakes Quarters

For publicly traded companies, earnings announcements are high-stakes events but the current context brings additional pressure. As we look towards the last quarter of 2020 and into 2021, the questions are getting pointier, while the outlook may still be uncertain.

A single poorly worded or vague answer on an analyst call or in an investor meeting can drive significant share price volatility and make it harder to raise capital. It can also unnerve employees and clients.

But there is also a rare opportunity now to shift focus to longer-term strategy and convince investors and other stakeholders to stick with you as you implement a plan.

This is no easy feat. You need to tread carefully between conveying confidence and looking deluded or in denial about short-term risks.

Preparation is key, but after weeks of revising your key messaging, MD&A and press release, it can be near impossible to anticipate how others will see you. Bring in the outsiders to take you through your paces, based on a thorough review of your industry context and how you are positioned relative to your peers.

Our Nasty Question Quarterly Prep sessions are designed for publicly traded companies with small executive teams, including those without an in-house investor relations function. We join the core disclosure team in the days before your release goes out, having reviewed the draft documents as they stand (under NDA, of course.) Then, taking the role of analysts, shareholders, employees and reporters, we fire both soft ball and nasty questions at you and see how you do. Together we evaluate your answers in terms of content, delivery and tone, iterating and rehearsing until you feel confident you’re ready to deliver your message.

Our goal is to position you as a company that stakeholders are prepared to stick with because you know how to steer through risks and embrace opportunities through unprecedented times.

About the Trainers

Together at Aimia Inc., Cheryl Kim and Karen Keyes helped deliver quarterly results through a period marked by shareholder activism, management and strategy changes, M&A transactions, major contract renegotiations, dividend suspensions, restructurings and layoffs. They relentlessly pushed the executive team to prepare for the hard questions, focus on their messaging, mindful of the multi-stakeholder universe.

Karen has two decades of experience asking and answering the hard questions, working with management teams at Aimia and Logica plc (now part of CGI). She knows what tough can look like, having stickhandled shareholder and analyst questions through a 40% one-day share price drop in her first IR job.

More about Cheryl can be found here and here

Use our Nasty Question
Quarterly Prep session to:

  • Test run your disclosure call script and plan
  • Test your prepared answers
  • Find holes in your Q&A
  • Improve your delivery
  • Build confidence

All sessions include:

  • Real time feedback and editing help
  • Post-call feedback and recommendations

Drop us a note to arrange Nasty Question Quarterly Prep Sessions for your team.

We create bespoke sessions to help you deliver your message more effectively across your stakeholders. Start Now