Mark Fasken: Today's guest is Samantha Hilson Sandler, Senior Director of Investor Relations at SpringWorks Therapeutics, a commercial stage biopharmaceutical company applying a precision medicine approach to developing and delivering life changing medicines for people with severe rare diseases and cancer.
Samantha has successfully built out the IR program at SpringWorks and is responsible for the company's investor strategies to ensure SpringWorks is appropriately positioned within the investment community. Prior to SpringWorks, Samantha has held roles at Blackstone Credit and at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in healthcare corporate and investment banking.
She's also an active community member. She is focused on mentorship and advancing the impact of women in business, and I'm excited to share her insights with you in this episode.
Introduction and Background
Mark Fasken: All right, so Samantha, to give a bit of background, I wanted to set the stage for this episode. You joined SpringWorks just over three years ago, basically to build out the IR program. And when we were talking about it, you said, there were some IR practices in place, but it wasn't really a formalized program. So as we go through this episode, we're really looking at this from the perspective of somebody who's walking into a company and really building an IR program from the ground up. From a lot of the discussions we've had, one of the most important parts of that, is ensuring that the IR program, really aligns with the overall corporate strategy.
Aligning IR Program with Corporate Strategy
Mark Fasken: And so I guess the question I wanted to ask you is how have you made sure that the IR program at SpringWorks aligns with the overall corporate strategy?
Samantha Hilson Sandler: That's a great question. And thank you, Mark, for having me here today. This is obviously a question we receive quite frequently in terms of generally, well, what is your corporate strategy and how is it communicated? So maybe just taking a step back, in terms of how you align your IR program to that corporate strategy. Understanding, well, what is corporate strategy? So it's a plan aligned to your company's mission that outlines clear goals, and details leadership's views on how to get there over time.
So you have a mission, you have goals of your leadership team, and marching orders forward. And as someone new to an organization or a company, first and foremost, it's really important to understand, well, what is your company's mission? And what are the key objectives of the key stakeholders who you will be partnering with, so that you can drive effective communications to the investment community, and potentially drive shareholder value over time. That's your mandate.
Building the IR Program from Scratch
Samantha Hilson Sandler: Where do you start? And it starts with a lot of rolling up your sleeves and doing a lot of homework by yourself, really jumping in, getting into the weeds here. So, first doing your homework, what does that look like? It's a lot of knowing your customer and what can you leverage to do that? Well, starting internally, you have your corporate decks, recent call transcripts, annual reports, SEC filings, even some board update materials.
Engaging with Leadership and Stakeholders
Samantha Hilson Sandler: Your primary source of information is actually going to be really doing all you can to engage with your leadership team and their deputies.
Try to set up meetings where you can shadow them on a bit more of a regular basis to understand the ins and outs. What are they prioritizing, and how does that feed into the overall corporate strategy and mission that you're looking to drive forward? Then from there, once you have a sense of the internal perspective, take a look outward. Go through broader analyst research reports.
Defining IR Strategy and Objectives
Samantha Hilson Sandler: If you're new to a company, the initiation reports, even going back at the time of an IPO can be really informative, and then you see how the story has evolved, what messages have been resonating, what parts of your investment thesis aren't necessarily resonating or being appreciated, and then you can all take that back into a package of, well, how do you define your IR strategy and objectives?
And overall, from there, I like to break it down into four primary buckets of initiatives. The first is effective and strategic communications. That's first and foremost, what your goal is as an investor relations professional with the end constituents being the investment community. Then it's cultivating and supporting shareholder based evolution.
Third, it's continuing to support your covering research analysts and the appropriate expansion of that universe over time. And then fourth, it's making sure you have a pulse on market insights. When you have those four buckets, I look at, well, what are the key objectives in any given period that you're working towards that you can achieve key strategic goals of the company under those buckets, and getting feedback from your management team, who are the key stakeholders who are going to be signing off on those efforts and contributing to them?
Mark Fasken: That's great. And so just a question for you then as a follow-up to that. I mean, you mentioned sort of going through these efforts of understanding the story, understanding the customer, sort of doing your own research. In your case, what was the time period between you starting and then you presenting your first proposal to the management team as it related to the IR strategy? Like that first iteration, was a three month project, a six month project. What did that look like?
Initial Challenges and Organic Growth
Samantha Hilson Sandler: So it's a great question when I first started it was a little bit less formalized. It was more on a project-by-project or objective-by-objective basis, where when I started it actually happened to be right before our fourth-quarter earnings and a heavy conference season.
So I was thrown right into the fire, where I was participating in investor meetings, hearing the messaging, and having a lot of time to digest what our mission is, what the thesis is that we're bringing to the investment community. So there I would say it was more organic within the first year of along the way defining key certain objectives. And what are the key results so that we can measure success? Now that can be in the magnitude of investor targeting. Are there a certain number of investors and key profiles of investors you want to get in front of? What does that penetration look like as a measure for success?
When you look at analyst reports and that dialogue, are your messages resonating? And or is there the opportunity to recalibrate your messaging strategy over time, so that you have certain points pull through in a more formalized way. And when you think about then generally, your shareholder-based composition that all flows through over time.
Effective Communication and Market Insights
Samantha Hilson Sandler: So I would say it wasn't exactly a clear formula at the beginning, but now every single quarter there is a formalized process, not just for IR, but throughout the company, of establishing key objectives for a given period ,and key results that you can measure. And you have to track against them in a formalized setting, and have ongoing dialogue with the leadership team to ensure that you're meeting the mark.
Mark Fasken: That's great. We've heard many times, I think even just on this podcast, stories like that, where IRO start immediately thrown into the fire, whether it's earnings or management team changes, or conferences. And I mean, I'm sure it's very stressful, but I think, it's probably also extremely valuable.
We've had people on the podcast who use the term listening tour, right. Spending that first, period of time just listening. I think that's really a summary of what you said, of just spend the time doing the research, listening to all the different stakeholders and ensuring that you have that deep understanding of the business before you start making recommendations around strategy.
So, I love the three, the four buckets that you break things into as well. It's a really easy way of thinking about it.
Samantha Hilson Sandler: That's exactly right, Mark. I would say being a sponge is your primary mandate. At the beginning, you were there to listen. You are there to understand and synthesize, and then you can create a roadmap, which will inevitably change and you need to be adaptive.
I think that's something specifically with investor relations is where you can create a clear roadmap for objectives on how you want to support shareholder based evolution, how you want to support the appropriate expansion of your analyst coverage base, how you want to continue building market insights, but within a switch of a light, that can complete the market environment and the broader dynamics can change.
So being really nimble is important and directly, effectively communicating that to your management team and the key stakeholders who will be involved in those efforts is of the utmost importance.
Mark Fasken: Absolutely. Okay. And so you, talked about the importance of sort of understanding those stakeholders and this listening tour that we talk about. What were some of the steps that you took and how did you identify who those key stakeholders were both internally and externally?
Identifying Key Stakeholders
Samantha Hilson Sandler: So internally, first, the question is, well, who is investor facing among the executive leadership team? And how have they approached their strategy of engaging with investors and analysts, and the broader community, whether it's your sell side teams, across banking, equity, capital markets and corporate access, how have they gone about that?
So getting in front of those key stakeholders who will actually be in the conversation with you and who you will essentially be an extension of and a connector to is critically important. From there, it's who are their deputies, who supports them on a more ongoing basis outside of investor relations, that are contributing to their views on the overall strategy and vision for the company's direction? Because they can be key resources as you're preparing for any type of external engagement and also crafting strategic messaging.
Then you look to, at least from my perspective, the key leaders of the C-suite who are contributing to the key catalysts or milestones that you're looking to achieve over the course of the year, understanding what their perspectives are, their key goals, because all of that will trickle through to the messaging that you're bringing to the investment community, and making sure that they have buy in and know that you can become a trusted partner to them, and bringing into the process as applicable. Then it's the same approach. You go to their deputies, because in many instances you are speaking with and working with leaders who are running the business, and you need to understand who they are closely partnering with and who they trust to get, certain projects and deliverables over the finish line.
Externally, I would say that you have a few primary buckets. One is you're covering research analysts. They also have extensive knowledge with the company. And before you've joined, they've also known your management team and have their own view on the company's mission, objectives and the path forward.
So building your own relationships with those analysts and understanding that it's a two way street. Where they're asking questions, you're answering, you're asking them questions and they're delivering. That's really important and maintaining that transparent, open dialogue.
Then from investors, that's where at first you mentioned it's a listening tour. Also, when you're in discussions with your stakeholders, starting with top holders, that's usually where a lot of your first conversations will begin. Really listen, what questions are they asking? And why are they asking those questions? Where does your particular company fit within their portfolio allocation?
What is their broader strategy? What stresses or opportunities are they facing from a fund perspective? Are they in a period of growth, or are they undergoing redemptions? Try to understand and then have that open dialogue to know where they're coming from. And then on the broader external relationships, I'd say cultivating close relationships with your vendors is really important.
You need a lot of tools to support your IR initiatives, not just related to market insights and your CRM capabilities, but beyond. And so making sure that you are a trusted partner to them, that there's clear communication and the understanding of the why is really important.
Mark Fasken: Awesome. We're going to get a little bit into vendors, technology, and tools in a minute here. I did also, though, want to touch on your experience. I mean, you spent time on both the sell side and within the buy side. How has that background informed your approach to investor relations and building relationships with investors?
Are there insights that you've drawn from your experience that have changed the approach that you've taken, which may be different from what some traditional IROs might do?
Samantha Hilson Sandler: That's a really fair question. So I started my career in healthcare, corporate banking, moved over to the asset management side to do investor relations, which was more industry agnostic, and then found my way to SpringWorks, which was a really fantastic transition to bring those skillsets and relationships together.
What I think is a differentiated view is that I've sat at various sides of the table. And so first and foremost, I'm really trying to understand the why, not just the what investors are asking, what analysts are asking, but really the underlying reasoning behind it and trying to really put myself in their shoes.
I've seen how investment committee memos are drafted. I understand certain diligence processes that these folks need to go through. Time is our most valuable asset. So when I go into any conversation, I try and be incredibly organized and efficient with the time, but also trying to ensure that it's not transactional because again, you're looking for a durable, longstanding relationship with these folks.
Even if they're trading in and out of your stock, even if they have a buy or sell rating, it's an ongoing conversation. So I think that perspective of really trying to understand the why. And what we can do to partner together is really important .
Mark Fasken: Yeah, that's great. I like that idea of sort of being really organized going in. Is there, one thing that you do in preparation for a meeting, whether it's materials that you prepare, or things that you send to investors ahead of time, that you found to be really effective in getting the most out of a meeting?
Samantha Hilson Sandler: Sure. So starting with how the meeting is initially started, is it a reactive or is it proactive discussion? Is it where an investor is coming to me? They're new to the story. They want an introduction or am I reaching out to them because I have news? In the first situation, let's say an investor is reaching out to you, and this is a reactive conversation. First and foremost, I do want to understand: what key questions do you have? What are your objectives for this meeting? Even before going into the actual conversation, that helps me calibrate one who should be in the room, and two, just a bit of familiarity on how we should orient the conversation. Before setting up that call, I also do some research. I dive into the resources I have available to understand their Portfolio composition, what their investment strategy is, information on the key PMs and analysts. What is their track record? What is their history? So that I can have an informed picture going in. Now, if it's a meeting with management, what I also do is prepare detailed prep notes with all of that information synthesized in a formalized manner.
And I also work to anticipate what questions might be asked if they're not shared directly. So I put in that email list of anticipated questions based off of analyst research reports, trying to triangulate upon, well, what could that investor be pulling through? What's top of mind for the investment community? The investors, in terms of what they're talking about on the sides, but how that's feeding through to the analyst reports. And then that really does help calibrate the conversation in a really efficient way.
Mark Fasken: That's great. I love that idea of kind of putting together some of the possible questions that may get asked. I mean, I know a lot of IROs really, you know, do put time into preparing for meetings and sort of looking at past interactions and past conversations, but sort of being able to predict what are some of the questions that might come up, right? Very useful way of thinking about the meeting preparation.
Leveraging Tools and Technology
Mark Fasken: I mean, as you know, there's a lot of different tools and technology available to, to IROs. and I think when you, when you're just getting started out, you know, sometimes they're not, there's not always the budget or the team to support everything that an IRO might want. But what tools and technology do you recommend for managing and streamlining IR activities when you're first getting up and going?
Samantha Hilson Sandler: That's a really good question. And to be perfectly frank, when I first started, I went to the resources that I knew well. Well, what was that? It was more traditional Excel and Word files.
That, I learned very quickly, was not going to work when you're looking to build out a corporate calendar or really streamline your internal data as it relates to your investor communications and engagement. So then what did I do? Well, I had a sounding board where I connected with various of my IR peers.
I actually did a bit of diligence and I formalized a report on my learnings from those keyIROs that I had the opportunity to meet. I initially interviewed to understand, well, what tools are you using? What works well, what doesn't? And then I really started to demo those particular products.
And I would say what I use now and what I currently leverage, I do use Irwin for my CRM systems and FactSet for broader market insights and intelligence, which I find to be very useful. I do still leverage NASDAQ services for market surveillance. I find them to be effective in that regard, and I use some of their broader systems.
I also do leverage AlphaSense when I'm looking at certain reports or doing specific projects. There's a lot of breadth there that I think you can use if you have the resources. But I would say going back to what is the primary focus and objective that you're working towards and going back to how much time do you actually have. And that's where having an all in one solution can be really beneficial to folks.
Mark Fasken: Awesome. That's great. Well, thank you for that information. And the other piece that I wanted to talk about, because getting into this topic of the difficulty of choice, is roadshows and sort of investor marketing, investor targeting and outreach.
Prioritizing Investor Outreach
Mark Fasken: I think as an IRO who's starting a program, I can imagine it's really challenging to decide where you're going to spend your time, right? Like what investors are you going to talk to? What cities are you going to market in? What conferences are you going to go to? And so how should a new IRO, who's getting a program going, think about prioritization, investor targeting, outreach, roadshows, which conferences to go to. How did you go about making those decisions?
Samantha Hilson Sandler: It's a really great question. And going back to when I first started at Springworks, it was actually more in the midst of COVID times. So my perspective may be a little bit different than others who are just starting now, and that we were in a largely virtual environment.
That's where, some of those themes still resonate even in a world where you're needing to hop on planes and actually see people in person. In terms of prioritization, always taking that step back and getting feedback from your management team, who is investor facing, in terms of their priorities, understanding the cadence at which they have time, and they find meetings with the investment community most effective.
That can be over calls, that can also be in person. Understanding their preferences and what has worked well for them in the past, and then building from there. When you're looking at your investor base, you're in many instances, you're going to first be prioritizing your top holders. And again, understanding how they like to access management and the appropriate cadence of those discussions.
What boxes do they need to check for their diligence, as they're going throughout a year, a quarter, a week. Then I would go to your covering research analysts. That's another bucket that immediately you need to feed those mouths as you will, ensuring that to the extent you can, there's the opportunity to participate in conferences, partner on NDRs, partner on other investor events and corporate access initiatives, because that's important for relationship building with those analysts, and it deepens the level of the relationships. When you're looking at investor targeting, I think that's another layer that continues to be important. And that's where I do think the conference setting is a really efficient way to meet with a variety of new potential new investors in a concentrated setting.
And it's also a very efficient use of management's time to calibrate those discussions and groups. But for certain targets, I do put a triage of prioritization and a categorization. Are you a smaller fund launch with more of a long short strategy, not necessarily long term capital, but still potentially meaningful pockets and interest in the company?
Well, that's potentially appropriate for an IR initial introduction. Then you have targets that are more maybe medium size and or have a different orientation. The discussion with management can be appropriate over time. And then you really look at those top tier, you know, potential long term capital providers and how you want to orient those discussions with management.
So that's it's a mix of how you think about it. But, I would say first and foremost, you really need to start with understanding the preferences of your C suite.
Evaluating Success and KPIs
Mark Fasken: And so once you've made some of these decisions, how do you assess what is working? And where you would continue to invest time versus what maybe is not, and you sort of cut it.
Samantha Hilson Sandler: It's a really fair question. And for those specifically when you think about larger scale broker events, conferences, well, you start to look at the quality of your meeting schedule. Does this event enable you to get in front of investors that are either top holders, key relationships, or new high quality targets?
And if not, well, going all those efforts might not be the best use of that time. From a fireside chat presentation standpoint. It's understanding well, One, if it's covering research analysts, that's very different than if it's someone who doesn't cover you yet. Looking at the analytics from the conferences. Do you have people who are tuning in? And are they in the room? Do you have people who are accessing and virtually as well? What did those analytics look like? And really was there that underlying analytical support for your participation? And then share that with the management team, and understand if it might be a better use of time for you to revisit that event in the future.
Mark Fasken: Yeah, I think that's great. we work with a lot of our IR clients on sort of what you just talked about, which is helping them understand, I think it can be tricky helping them understand when I'm going to a conference, who should I meet with? Where am I going to best spend my time? If you're in the fortunate position where you're getting a lot of inbound interest for meetings, trying to help people decide, what worked, and what didn't.
And I think that idea of really looking and saying, you know, afterwards, because I don't get the sense or what– if you have a view on this, but I don't get the sense that, IROs maybe always have the time, or make the time, to do that retroactive review, where it's like, let's actually sit down after a conference or after a roadshow and really look at the meetings and say, were those good quality? Do we want to continue to invest time here? I do feel like, it seems as though a part of your program, which is great, is really doing the analysis. And looking back and saying, was this effective or not?
Samantha Hilson Sandler: I think as you highlighted, the analytical component is very important. And maybe that goes back to one of your earlier questions in terms of a potentially differentiated take I bring, given my prior experience in financial services, is that if you have metrics, those are tangible, and you can really make decisions off of them. So, exactly to this point, what is the time period in which you can evaluate a quote unquote effective meeting? Now, I think that's a longer time horizon than just an immediate debrief after a particular conference, NDR, and or roadshow that you've put on yourself because it's the follow-through that I think you also need to overlay. So let's say we had 30 conversations at X conference. Yes, you can evaluate if they were quote unquote effective. If you thought that the investors questions were relevant and insightful based off of your messaging. But. I think you need a longer time horizon to evaluate if it was actually an effective meeting.
What do I mean by that? Well, has there been continued follow up and engagement? Did that conversation, even if it seemed to be maybe less efficient than others, actually ungate multiple subsequent opportunities and they initiated a position in size later down the road? Well, that would be a more tangible and effective way to quantify that interaction, but it takes time.
So I think that's an important measure is–the durability of that relationship, and then you can make a decision from there.
Mark Fasken: Awesome. And that last point on tracking analytics, metrics, etcetera, does lead into my next question around KPIs. Seems to be just an ongoing discussion in the community of: how do you define success? How do you demonstrate progress to the management team? I think there are a lot of different KPIs you can track, but there's this feeling that none of them are really perfect. And so what are some of the KPIs that you track and how did you decide on those KPIs?
Samantha Hilson Sandler: Very relevant question, and it's continuously evolving, but I think it goes back to our discussion earlier in terms of the four buckets of objectives that I personally continuously look at.
And just as a reminder, that is one strategic communications overall. Two, shareholder based evolution. Three, analyst engagement and appropriate coverage expansion, and four, differentiated market insights. So when I'm thinking about KPIs, I like to bucket them under that umbrella. So what does that look like?
First, strategic communications. How can you measure the effectiveness in a more tangible way? Well, you look at engagement from the investment community, at your events, and have your publications gained traction and is that information being received? And are your key messages being appreciated by the investment community, whether it's reflected in conversations with investors after a particular milestone or event, or reflected in analyst notes.
And then from there, you can make decisions. So I think that's one way. It's not a tangible KPI or percentage measure, but there's resources you can use to see if your messaging is being received from the investment community. Shareholder based evolution. That's something that is an ongoing discussion on how to support that.
And you could think about that in terms of engagement with your existing shareholders, tracking the number of quality engagements, and how that translates the proportion of your existing shareholder base and also from a targeting perspective, some form of analysis as to conversions.
Now that's a little bit trickier because we don't have control in terms of the investors engagements, but that's when you can also go to more qualitative key performance measures as to are those particular investors, from your view, understanding the story and is that resonating in those discussions?
From analyst engagement and appropriate coverage expansion, how you measure that is one in terms of the number of in touch points, whether it's one on one at the broker conference setting, but also going in through and evaluating analyst consensus, and for companies like us who don't guide, that's a bit more of a nuanced process, but it's a broader picture as to again, are your communications and is the potential value of your company being recognized and appreciated? And how do you have that evolving conversation.
And four, market insights, yeah, that's just an area where, sure, stock price performance is of course an overlying measure of market sentiment, but that's not something, again, that an IRO can have control over. But being able to really understand the technical environment and fundamental drivers well, that's something that you can measure and share with your executive team.
Mark Fasken: I think that those are great and, I know that there are people also, some of the ones we've heard is people sort of measuring things like number of meetings with the top 25, sort of changes in the makeup of the shareholder base as it relates to style or turnover. Yeah, to your point, like there's a lot of different things that you can track. I think at the end of the day, less is more, right? So trying to choose a few key metrics and just really focusing on those for a period of time. I think that's really helpful in the way that you look at it.
Transitioning from Clinical to Commercial Stage
Mark Fasken: And so the last question that we get to here is, you know, recently, somewhat recently, there's been a change at SpringWorks as the company's moved from clinical stage to commercial stage, which, you know, in the health care and pharmaceutical space is a big change.
And so how has that changed your approach to investor relations, if at all? And how has that changed the way in which you interact with investors?
Samantha Hilson Sandler: To your point, it's a very exciting time for any company. Regardless of sector, when you transition from effectively you're selling an idea to actually selling a product. And that's huge, not just as it relates to your overall messaging, but the types of investors that you're engaging with. And it can really be an ungating event. So how have things stayed the same? Well, we're still maintaining really deep engagement with our top holders, covering research analysts, supporting appropriate expansion across the board.
But something that is new, which is an opportunity, is that there's Investors who we haven't had conversations with who are starting to come off the sidelines, and many of them can be more of a generalist orientation, long term capital providers. What does that mean in terms of the conversation? Well, they have different objectives.
They have different goals in terms of what information is important to them as they're building their investment thesis. So it's a really exciting opportunity to potentially recalibrate some of your messaging, so it's digestible to this broader audience of investors. Now, it doesn't mean that your fundamental thesis is changing by any means, but it's making sure that you're getting to the heart and understanding of what's important to them.
So of course, when you're a clinical stage company in biotech, you have questions on the science, clinical data readouts, treatment landscapes, and potential positioning. But all of those themes still hold, but now you're starting to get new questions.
Now that your potential risk profile has changed on what is your operating model? How do you think about your expense profile going forward? How do you think about overall capital allocation? Now these are all very important topics, but they might not have been at the forefront of all of your discussions per se.
So, It's a really exciting time to revisit how you go about your Q and A's and how you can effectively address those questions in terms of going out to folks. Well, it's a potential opportunity, maybe to get on the road and meet face to face with certain investors that are newer to the story and also ensuring that you're also feeding the mouths of your longstanding supporters.
It could be by geography as well. So for us, we're also thinking about potentially well, what are opportunities to engage with certain holders here in the U. S., but abroad as well. So it's a very exciting time and certainly a lot of new opportunities.
Mark Fasken: That's great. I love that answer. One thing that really jumps out to me in that, Samantha, is your ability to sort of look ahead and think about what is this change in the company going to mean as it relates to the questions that we're going to get asked. And I think being one of the people who's flagging that to the management team and saying our conversations with investors are going to change, and these are probably some of the things that are going to change is so valuable so that you're not walking into meetings with the management team, and hey're not feeling like they're prepared. We're doing a session at NIRI, which is coming up in a couple of weeks, and the idea around that session is like seeing around corners, and this idea that part of the role of an IRO is to be an advisor that is looking ahead and saying, these are some of the stumbling blocks or opportunities that may be coming down the line and then helping the management team capitalize on that. And so I think you do that really well in the way that you've explained a lot of the things here today.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Mark Fasken: Samantha, with that, I think we'll wrap up, really appreciate your time, and, we'll talk again soon.
Samantha Hilson Sandler: Thank you, Mark. Really appreciate it.
Mark Fasken: I hope you enjoyed this episode of Winning IR, the Investor Relations Podcast. Winning IR is brought to you by Irwin, the IR solution designed with engagement in mind.
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