Success Story:

Company Overview

Tourmaline Oil is Canada’s largest natural gas producer focused on long-term growth through an aggressive exploration, development, production, and acquisition program. Since commencing operations in 2008, Tourmaline, through a series of strategic acquisitions, farm-ins, and land acquisitions combined with its active capital exploration and development program, has assembled an extensive undeveloped land position with a large, multi-year drilling inventory and operating control of important natural gas processing and transportation infrastructure in two core long-term growth areas. Tourmaline's long-term business strategy is to increase shareholder value by building an extensive asset base over two to three core exploration and production areas and exploiting and developing these areas to increase reserves, production, and cash flows at an attractive return on invested capital.

Meet the Manager of Capital Markets at Tourmaline Oil Corp

For the last four years, Jamie Heard has focused on building the capital market strategy at Tourmaline Oil. From acquisitions, capital return allocation, to investor relations, he strives to be efficient at meeting the many needs of the company and splitting his responsibilities accordingly. Jamie was formerly an Equity Research Analyst, and later a Institutional Investment Analyst & PM, where he spent almost ten years covering Canadian and US publicly-listed companies in the Energy sector. He holds a Master of Science in Business Administration from the University of Rochester,  a Bachelor's degree in Finance & Economics from Carleton University and is a CFA Charterholder. 

Replacing Antiquated IR Software with Irwin was a Seamless Transition

Modern, easy-to-use, and integrated: Irwin is the highest-rated investor relationship management tool on G2. We are continuously investing in our product development based on the needs of the industry and direct client feedback to support the most important IR workflows. It’s no wonder that companies such as Tourmaline are making the switch to Irwin. 

“We had Ipreo before Irwin, and that is what we were using. There was a period where I was a little bit frustrated with what I was getting with Ipreo. Irwin reached out to introduce themselves and their product and I realized it was a good time to make the switch.” 

How Irwin Differentiates From Other IR Software

“The thing that immediately drew me in was that [Irwin] had a better targeting feature. I liked the Suggested Investors, it was a nice little insight, and I found targeting [overall] was a lot faster and easier.”

Tourmaline is among the 78% of Irwin customers who have connected with more investors that are the right fit for their company since implementing our software. Our insightful targeting capabilities allow customers to access untapped global networks of capital, and our blend of reported, non-reported, and surveillance data gives the most accurate and comprehensive shareholder monitoring on the market. 

“[When comparing products] I figured the contact details of a person or organization would be harder for a newer company to figure out. That’s where I spent most of my due diligence - testing Irwin vs. Ipreo, and I found that not only were you matching on contacts, there were contacts I was trying to find for months, that you guys had.

 I was actually getting leads that I wasn't able to source on the incumbent.”

Migrating Your Data is Easy with Irwin

Our team has built systems and processes to make transitions to the Irwin platform as seamless as possible.  Jamie shares the positive experience he had migrating Tourmaline’s data: 

“[Irwin] is a plug-and-play system. It was really easy to translate all of my historical data into the platform, it was very painless.”

The Importance of Irwin, Even When Well-Covered by the Sell-Side

Well on their way in pursuit of becoming one of North America's largest natural gas producers, Tourmaline Oil is well covered by analysts due to their position in the market. 

“We have a lot of analyst coverage right now, most of it being Canadian. But there are lots of pockets of capital that we can target in the United States.”

Jamie mentions the importance of Irwin and how it allows him to strategically manage more high-quality meetings for their conference days, roadshows, and/or investor meetings. 

“I know the city and generally who I am looking to meet. I’ll pull a list of 50 people from Irwin and send that over to [the bank’s] Sales team. They then try to line up the meetings with the people I provided and usually it’s about a 50% hit rate. It’s a good use of my time, it's quick and it helps expedite the process.” 

Even though well-covered by the sell side, Jamie reiterates that it’s also equally important to continue to take a proactive approach to IR, and that using Irwin has helped him nurture existing investor relationships and cultivate new ones. 

A More Complete View of the Shareholder Base

After meeting with investors, Jamie mentions that not all of his US shareholders are required to file their holdings; therefore, he utilizes Irwin’s custom holdings feature. When investors share their holdings with him, he can record that information in Irwin to more accurately view his shareholder base. Being able to analyze custom holdings that are otherwise not recorded allows him to track ROI on engagement with those investors.  

Valuable Insights Using Irwin’s Reporting Features

After he completes his meetings, once a quarter, Jamie will review the changes in ownership utilizing Irwin’s reporting features to gauge risks and opportunities and to improve the relationships he is building with shareholders. 

“I'll look at our changes in ownership and also changes in ownership in everything that looks like us around the world. This is helpful to see where we should steer our efforts in the short and long term, and to get a sense on where our story might resonate more. I also track who we meet, how we meet them and report that back to the board.” 

“[Generating reports at the end of quarter (ie. who is moving money and where)—that used to be a two to three day exercise with Ipreo and now I can get that done in a day with Irwin. It is for sure a time saver.]”

Understanding Tourmaline’s ESG Performance and Communicating it Effectively 

With demand from stakeholders for increased transparency into how companies manage ESG issues at an all-time high, IR teams are looking to strengthen their ESG story and implement an effective strategy. Irwin's investor targeting solution helps Jamie identify ESG-focused funds that might be interested in Tourmaline’s company story.

“We’re looking at all the solutions in which to better track and reduce our emissions. We have a number of dedicated engineers who work on the environmental side as well as a team on the social, indigenous, and government relations sides, understanding all of the pieces work together. We’re looking to communicate why we're an efficient operator and that we're delivering an extremely clean product. Our governance gets a lot of checkmarks with the rating agencies.”

The Value of Support From Capital Markets Experts

Beyond technical product support, our Customer Success Managers provide strategic expertise to ensure your IR program is successful.

‍“My [Customer Success Manager] and I typically catch up once every two to four weeks, depending on schedules. He’s been great at helping me use Irwin more efficiently!”

Along with a dedicated CSM, Irwin also provides an IRM Assistant feature that allows you to save time and energy by minimizing the amount of manual effort that goes into manual data entry and upkeep.

“Something that wasn’t on my radar but has been very handy has been the IRM Assistant feature. If I don’t have time to generate an itinerary or do manual data entry, it’s still done by [the Irwin Assistant].” 

A Message to IR Professionals Considering Irwin

‍“I recommend [Irwin] all the time. I think I recommended [Irwin] to two firms just last month. People are asking: Who do you use? With Irwin, you're getting great service, it’s [designed with] new tech so it’s fresh and not clunky. It’s the right price for the service. I recommend [Irwin] all over the place.”