John Marino asked:
Managing the Good (and the Bad) News: An Interview with Bayfield’s Head of Corporate Communications
By John Marino
Being a public company is not easy. Public companies, or “pubcos”, as they are sometimes referred to, have the same concerns as private companies, plus a few more complicated issues that require daily attention. One of these daily tasks is that of Investor Relations or IR. Investor Relations is the art of relaying company developments both positive and negative, to existing shareholders and potential investors. It also means dealing with any investor concerns.
To delve further into the art of Investor Relations I contacted Don Myers, a Director and the Corporate Communications Manager at Bayfield Ventures (TSX-BYV), “Bayfield”, to explain to me the role of an Investor Relations team.
I caught Don on the phone at the end of the trading day, just after 1:00pm Pacific time. Don was enthusiastic even though it was late in his workday. Typically, an Investor Relations officer on the west coast will start their workday anytime between 6:00 and 6:30am, and work until perhaps mid-evening if required “to get the story out”, or “deal with investor concerns”.
Don explained, “Bayfield uses an in-house Investor Relations” approach rather than utilizing “outside Investor Relations Firms.” There are two reasons for this. One reason is cost, and the other is the fact this in-house approach ensures investors receive only Bayfield information, rather that being bombarded with news about several companies at the same time.
Don outlined, “Our department consists of four people, including myself…. We are proactive by making calls to investors or emailing information to a database of 27,000 individuals. That includes shareholders, potential investors, stockbrokers, and mining analysts. We take investor calls and we answer investor email requests. We update Bayfield’s website when there’s news, or mining analyst reports like the recent coverage of the Rainy River gold camp by Wellington West and Canaccord.”
Bayfield also participates in two programs to generate leads. “Leads” are potential investors interested in further information on a company or interested in being kept informed on company developments. For an investor relations officer, a lead is a potential investor.
“One program we utilize is a combined program with 30 to 40 other junior companies, which helps offset the costs of reaching a huge audience”, Don stated. ”The program targets several publications like The Globe and Mail, Northern Miner, and Investors Digest. This generates between 400 to 600 leads every 2 to 4 months. The other program utilizes 91 publications worldwide like, The Globe Investor, Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, that allows free Annual Report access to interested investors, and this generates 250 to 500 leads a month.”
Typically, each lead is sent either a PowerPoint presentation via email or a fact sheet. After this, the lead is called, to follow up on any questions the potential investor may have about Bayfield’s ongoing operations. Many investors will call back once receiving the information and usually will want to speak with someone in Investor Relations.
“We’re always accessible,” Don stresses, “as a matter of fact, all Directors and Officers at Bayfield are accessible at any time if any Investor wishes to speak to any specific person, including, Don Huston, our President.”
Not knowing anything about Bayfield, I asked Don to give me a brief synopsis as he would any investor. Don told me, “Bayfield is a small-cap junior resource company with only 17.3 million shares outstanding and significant assets in three areas.”
The emerging gold camp of Rainy River, Ontario, Don told me is one of the most exciting deals he’s been involved with. Bayfield has three significant land positions, or “bookend claim blocks”, which border Rainy River Resources (TSX-RR) new discovery zones.
One claim block adjoining Rainy River is “within 800 metres of the Rainy River discovery zones and actually appears to have the same geological formation and geological structures as those that extend to our ground”.
Don tells the story clearly; you can tell that not only does he know the story well, but that he’s also enthusiastic about its prospects.
“We’ll be diamond drilling in July,” he said. “Till drilling this past May outlined zones with values over 37,000 ppb Gold, which is over 1 ounce per tonne gold. It’s important to understand that geologically speaking the “till” sits on top of the bedrock so the “till” should have gold values present if it sits above gold in rock.” In other words, there’s gold in them thar hills.
Don explained that till drilling was utilized by Rainy River to outline anomalous gold values which were later diamond drilled and led to the discoveries last fall that caused Rainy River’s stock to soar. “Rainy River was successful using this method of exploration so we’ve utilized this same methodology,” he said.
Bayfield’s other projects include a joint venture with Goldcorp near Red Lake, Ontario, and a joint venture with BHP-Billiton in Mongolia.
“Goldcorp and BHP are two of the world’s largest mining companies,” Don explained. “We are a unique small-cap junior in that we have these two hugely successful majors as joint venture partners.” True, I thought. Few junior companies can boast having even one major mining company as a joint venture partner.
But there can’t always be good news, I said to Don. What happens when something doesn’t go Bayfield’s way – how do you break the news to investors? Don did not hesitate in answering: “Honesty is the best policy”.
“You have to hit it head on. You try to balance the bad news with all the good news happening to allow shareholders to make informed decisions.” Don stressed that good Investor Relations is all about “honesty” being “the best policy,” because investors will always remember the story the IR team pitches. If investors see as story as being inaccurate or exaggerated, you make lose the investor.
Don used Bayfield’s BHP joint venture in Mongolia as an example. “BHP-Billiton had a crew make a new coal discovery on our joint venture ground – coal seams were discovered. The property is near the large Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit, which contains over 5 billion metric tons of coking and hard coal. When BHP announced the coal discovery, some locals suddenly tried to put in claims on our ground.”
This became a bad news situation for Don’s IR team, which had to be conveyed to shareholders. Once the land claims started coming in, the Mongolian government had to consider tendering them. Putting a concession to tender usually means the concession will go to the highest bidder. In this case, however, BHP-Billiton and Bayfield had to convince the Mongolian government to allow them the coal concession, since it was their team that made the coal discovery in the first place.
“BHP-Billiton recently notified us that they will be conducting a 10,000 metre drilling program on this ground sometime this summer or early fall. So, we’re ready to go back into action, and I’m proud to point out that our investors have been kept apprised of the situation the whole way through.”
As Don pointed out, an effective Investor Relations team is accessible to address investor concerns or queries, is proactive in ensuring maximum exposure of news and developments, and communicates both positive and negative news honestly and with integrity.
Sarah
Managing the Good (and the Bad) News: An Interview with Bayfield’s Head of Corporate Communications
By John Marino
Being a public company is not easy. Public companies, or “pubcos”, as they are sometimes referred to, have the same concerns as private companies, plus a few more complicated issues that require daily attention. One of these daily tasks is that of Investor Relations or IR. Investor Relations is the art of relaying company developments both positive and negative, to existing shareholders and potential investors. It also means dealing with any investor concerns.
To delve further into the art of Investor Relations I contacted Don Myers, a Director and the Corporate Communications Manager at Bayfield Ventures (TSX-BYV), “Bayfield”, to explain to me the role of an Investor Relations team.
I caught Don on the phone at the end of the trading day, just after 1:00pm Pacific time. Don was enthusiastic even though it was late in his workday. Typically, an Investor Relations officer on the west coast will start their workday anytime between 6:00 and 6:30am, and work until perhaps mid-evening if required “to get the story out”, or “deal with investor concerns”.
Don explained, “Bayfield uses an in-house Investor Relations” approach rather than utilizing “outside Investor Relations Firms.” There are two reasons for this. One reason is cost, and the other is the fact this in-house approach ensures investors receive only Bayfield information, rather that being bombarded with news about several companies at the same time.
Don outlined, “Our department consists of four people, including myself…. We are proactive by making calls to investors or emailing information to a database of 27,000 individuals. That includes shareholders, potential investors, stockbrokers, and mining analysts. We take investor calls and we answer investor email requests. We update Bayfield’s website when there’s news, or mining analyst reports like the recent coverage of the Rainy River gold camp by Wellington West and Canaccord.”
Bayfield also participates in two programs to generate leads. “Leads” are potential investors interested in further information on a company or interested in being kept informed on company developments. For an investor relations officer, a lead is a potential investor.
“One program we utilize is a combined program with 30 to 40 other junior companies, which helps offset the costs of reaching a huge audience”, Don stated. ”The program targets several publications like The Globe and Mail, Northern Miner, and Investors Digest. This generates between 400 to 600 leads every 2 to 4 months. The other program utilizes 91 publications worldwide like, The Globe Investor, Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, that allows free Annual Report access to interested investors, and this generates 250 to 500 leads a month.”
Typically, each lead is sent either a PowerPoint presentation via email or a fact sheet. After this, the lead is called, to follow up on any questions the potential investor may have about Bayfield’s ongoing operations. Many investors will call back once receiving the information and usually will want to speak with someone in Investor Relations.
“We’re always accessible,” Don stresses, “as a matter of fact, all Directors and Officers at Bayfield are accessible at any time if any Investor wishes to speak to any specific person, including, Don Huston, our President.”
Not knowing anything about Bayfield, I asked Don to give me a brief synopsis as he would any investor. Don told me, “Bayfield is a small-cap junior resource company with only 17.3 million shares outstanding and significant assets in three areas.”
The emerging gold camp of Rainy River, Ontario, Don told me is one of the most exciting deals he’s been involved with. Bayfield has three significant land positions, or “bookend claim blocks”, which border Rainy River Resources (TSX-RR) new discovery zones.
One claim block adjoining Rainy River is “within 800 metres of the Rainy River discovery zones and actually appears to have the same geological formation and geological structures as those that extend to our ground”.
Don tells the story clearly; you can tell that not only does he know the story well, but that he’s also enthusiastic about its prospects.
“We’ll be diamond drilling in July,” he said. “Till drilling this past May outlined zones with values over 37,000 ppb Gold, which is over 1 ounce per tonne gold. It’s important to understand that geologically speaking the “till” sits on top of the bedrock so the “till” should have gold values present if it sits above gold in rock.” In other words, there’s gold in them thar hills.
Don explained that till drilling was utilized by Rainy River to outline anomalous gold values which were later diamond drilled and led to the discoveries last fall that caused Rainy River’s stock to soar. “Rainy River was successful using this method of exploration so we’ve utilized this same methodology,” he said.
Bayfield’s other projects include a joint venture with Goldcorp near Red Lake, Ontario, and a joint venture with BHP-Billiton in Mongolia.
“Goldcorp and BHP are two of the world’s largest mining companies,” Don explained. “We are a unique small-cap junior in that we have these two hugely successful majors as joint venture partners.” True, I thought. Few junior companies can boast having even one major mining company as a joint venture partner.
But there can’t always be good news, I said to Don. What happens when something doesn’t go Bayfield’s way – how do you break the news to investors? Don did not hesitate in answering: “Honesty is the best policy”.
“You have to hit it head on. You try to balance the bad news with all the good news happening to allow shareholders to make informed decisions.” Don stressed that good Investor Relations is all about “honesty” being “the best policy,” because investors will always remember the story the IR team pitches. If investors see as story as being inaccurate or exaggerated, you make lose the investor.
Don used Bayfield’s BHP joint venture in Mongolia as an example. “BHP-Billiton had a crew make a new coal discovery on our joint venture ground – coal seams were discovered. The property is near the large Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit, which contains over 5 billion metric tons of coking and hard coal. When BHP announced the coal discovery, some locals suddenly tried to put in claims on our ground.”
This became a bad news situation for Don’s IR team, which had to be conveyed to shareholders. Once the land claims started coming in, the Mongolian government had to consider tendering them. Putting a concession to tender usually means the concession will go to the highest bidder. In this case, however, BHP-Billiton and Bayfield had to convince the Mongolian government to allow them the coal concession, since it was their team that made the coal discovery in the first place.
“BHP-Billiton recently notified us that they will be conducting a 10,000 metre drilling program on this ground sometime this summer or early fall. So, we’re ready to go back into action, and I’m proud to point out that our investors have been kept apprised of the situation the whole way through.”
As Don pointed out, an effective Investor Relations team is accessible to address investor concerns or queries, is proactive in ensuring maximum exposure of news and developments, and communicates both positive and negative news honestly and with integrity.
Sarah
