How to Use Your IR Website to Uncover Activist Investors

Any company, large or small, can be the target of activist investors. It can be challenging for IR teams to spot and get ahead of investor activism in their company, even with the best shareholder monitoring and stock surveillance.

In addition to tips we have previously shared about spotting and managing activist investors, thanks to our recent innovation, Irwin IQ, there's also a new way to uncover when an activist might be interested in your company: your IR website.

For a long time, website analytics have been anonymized. Even with recent innovations in IP lookup technology, it was only a piece of the puzzle for IR teams since there has yet to be a connection to investor profiles, shareholder data, and activist campaign history. 

That's where Irwin IQ comes in. This innovative technology not only tells you who has been on your IR website and what they've looked at but is contextualized with the robust data within Irwin. Now, IR teams can identify investors visiting their website, see who the suggested people are at the organization based on their industry, market cap, and peer holdings, investigate and action critical activity data, and get a better understanding of the impact of their IR program. IR teams can also use the tool to uncover activist interest, with Irwin's investor activist campaign history on people and organizations. Irwin IQ can be used with any existing IR website, regardless of the hosting provider.

How one company was able to detect activist interest in their company, even when surveillance didn't catch it.

It’s no secret that the Irwin team was comprehensive in our creation and launch of Irwin IQ. As part of that, select clients were chosen to participate in the Beta program pre-launch. 

One of those clients was able to catch an activist investor who was all over their IR website. They had surveillance in place, but there was no flag that there may be activist interest. Thanks to the data in Irwin IQ, our client was able to alert their surveillance team, who was then able to triangulate the position they were building and alert the board and management team so that they could be more prepared once the activist campaign was launched. 

Preparing for shareholder activism is a critical component of the IRO's role, and finding new ways to uncover insight to enhance that preparation is at the forefront.