Success Story:

About Delta Air Lines

Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) is a leader in domestic and international travel, offering airline tickets and flights to over 300 destinations in 60 countries. Through exceptional service and the power of innovation, Delta never stops looking for ways to tailor every trip to every customer. Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, Delta is the leading global airline focused on delivering a world-class experience on over 4,000 daily flights. 

Meet the Managing Director and Manager of Investor Relations at Delta

Andrew Storm is the Managing Director, Investor Relations at Delta Air Lines. He is responsible for maintaining Delta’s relationships with the investment community and communicating Delta’s financial results, strategy, and ESG priorities to Investors. 

Jack Cunningham is the General Manager, Investor Relations at Delta Air Lines and joined the investor relations team in 2023 after eight years in other roles within the company. 

Why Delta Air Lines Switched to Irwin

The team at Delta was evaluating the available IR solutions on the market, as well as their previous solution. When the team reviewed Irwin, Andrew was impressed by the innovative time-saving features:

“Many available IR solutions on the market were built over 20 years ago, and there has been very little innovation in the space. What was interesting to us about Irwin was that we saw something that was new. Irwin has made time-consuming and manual tasks simpler and more automated.” 

Looking to increase the Delta IR team’s efficiency, Andrew was interested in Irwin’s automated features that would save his team time and allow them to focus on more strategic efforts instead of administrative logging and data management:

“Our prior solution was limiting our team’s bandwidth–we’d have to spend a lot of time on manual logging and tasks, which doesn’t drive much value. With Irwin, the team has more time to focus on relevant, valuable efforts. As IROs we’re always trying to figure out better ways of doing our job–being smarter, having more content. In Irwin, we’ve found a solution that looks to eliminate all the annoying and time-consuming processes and tasks we have to do. By eliminating those distractions, it frees up time for our team to be more strategic.”

Jack was also interested in Irwin’s automated features and integrations, such as the Calendar Integration:

“The automated workflows in Irwin were also a deciding factor; the fact that it can scrape your calendars and plug that right into your CRM instead of having the team log it all was new functionality that we were interested in.”

For Andrew, Irwin presented a more purpose-built IR solution when compared to legacy providers:

“As we evaluated the solutions available, we felt that Irwin was the only solution that wasn’t just taking small steps forward, but had evaluated what IROs needed and purpose-built a solution for them.”

The team at Delta didn’t have to compromise data quality for a more modern experience, and Jack elaborates on Irwin’s approach to innovation and product development:

“The platforms provide the same data, but Irwin had a more modern and user-friendly interface. Many of the available platforms are very static, but the team at Irwin is trying to modernize the space for IR teams.”

A seamless transition

A critical factor in switching to a new IR solution is the ability to easily transfer historical ownership and activity data. Jack recounts a seamless transition with Irwin:

“We could seamlessly port over our historical meeting and ownership data, which meant we didn’t lose volumes of historical information by switching. We sent over an export of our historical activity to the Irwin Assistant team, and it was uploaded directly into Irwin for us.”

How the Delta team uses Irwin

A focused approach to relationships and engagement

For the team at Delta, Irwin acts as a filter to prioritize engagements and relationships–ensuring the team gets the most out of their time. Andrew explains:

“With Irwin, we can get deeper insights when it comes to targeting–going beyond just who owns our direct competitors and helping us to understand where we should invest our time.”

Jack also uses Irwin to understand how previous interactions and engagements should influence their engagement or outreach:

"Irwin allows us to analyze recent interactions quickly and provides crucial context, such as ownership stakes and position sizes. We can easily see where we've made progress with investors and where we've invested time without seeing results. This enables us to efficiently decide whether to schedule follow-up meetings or place investors on a list for future outreach. The tool is invaluable for prioritizing and managing our investor communications."

Immediate context on holders

For Jack, getting to context quickly is critical–it gives the team at Delta more perspective into activity within their shareholder base:

“When I see someone buying into Delta, I want to immediately know–are they just buying Delta? Are they also buying our peers? The peer group activity is really interesting for us to know whether it’s a sector trade or a company-specific trade.”

Jack and the team use this information to prepare for investor engagements and meetings:

“When I see an unfamiliar name, Irwin quickly gives me context on the important context like average turnover, assets under management, and peer ownership–a lot of the basic information we need going into a meeting with someone.”

Integrated insights with Irwin + FactSet

The team at Delta uses the integrated Irwin + FactSet solution to access important market news and data. The Microsoft Office integration allows for simple updating of important data into financial modeling for Delta, as Jack explains:

“We do a lot with the Excel integration from FactSet to feed our comp tables and consensus estimate pulls. We simply refresh Excel sheets to pull live market data on Delta, Delta’s peers, and other industry players. This allows us to compare financial metrics and financial modeling.”

Accessing peer insights and the latest market news

With FactSet’s StreetAccount news as well as analyst research, estimates, and consensus data in FactSet, Jack can stay up-to-date on what is happening with Delta’s peer group: 

“FactSet is my go-to source for getting the most up-to-date information on our peers–previous earnings reports and transcripts, recent events, and what was reported at those events. All of the company filing data is so easily accessible from FactSet, which is a huge resource for me and saves a lot of time I would have spent sourcing the data from company IR websites. 

Getting that constant stream of news headlines, having all the data available to me for financial metrics and modeling, and then getting primary source material across the industry very quickly is a great resource.” 

High-quality support and product influence

For Delta, high-quality support is important, but the team also appreciates their ability to influence the Irwin product. Andrew explains::

“We’re very happy with the level of support we’ve received from the team at Irwin. The Irwin team understands that customer feedback will help to build a better product, and we’ve seen our feedback come to life within Irwin in a reasonably quick amount of time.”

Jack elaborates:

“The service so far has been very responsive. I can send product feedback to our Account Manager, and often, whether it’s hours, days, or weeks later, that feedback will be live on the platform. It’s great to interact with a company that is not going to tell us something is not possible or it works the way it is.”

Jack also appreciates the Irwin team’s proactive approach to his requests and questions:

“If I can’t find something in Irwin or have a special request, our Account Manager will respond with not only the instructions to find what I was looking for, but a proactive export or report that we need. That’s been helpful to answer the immediate question from our team, but also gives me what I need to complete the task the next time.”

Message to IR teams considering Irwin

“What’s most important for an IR solution is its ability to eliminate busy work so you can be more strategic in your role. Irwin allows you to spend more time talking to investors or investing in your materials–especially for small or time-constrained teams; focusing on what allows your team to spend more time on valuable work is huge.”

Andrew Storm

“Any time you’re considering a platform or making a change to a new platform, it can be easy to stick with what you have because no solution is perfect. Working with Irwin is refreshing because there is room for growth and innovation based on your feedback as a customer. We appreciate the ability to influence that innovation. There’s a lot of transparency into product development with their customers.” 

Jack Cunningham