Iona sorts out teething troubles

This month last year Iona Technologies became one of a handful of Irish companies to take the plunge and go public on the Nasdaq stock exchange. One year on, what has it learned and what advice can it give other Irish companies considering a similar move?

On February 25th, 1997, when Iona's initial offering went public the high on that day was $23.25 (£16.72). Today the stock is trading around $20. Management concedes that the stock price should be higher and admits that it has had to struggle along the way.

Last summer, Mr Kris Tuttle, software analyst of Soundview Financial Group in Stamford Connecticut, produced a report that was quite critical of the company's investor relations in the US.

The institutional ownership of Iona is high and one key ingredient to a successful strategy is good communication with the institutional shareholders. Iona's former chief financial officer (CFO), Mr E.C. Mick Prokopis (54), who is the current chief operating officer, was seen to have some faults.

Looking back on the year, Mr Tuttle says, part of the problem was the company was new to Nasdaq and new as a public company. "It struggled more than most to figure out how to deal with the US investment community." He attributes some of the struggle to the "personality quirks" of Mr Prokopis. "In terms of dealing with the investment community, he was not necessarily the right fit and this caused occasional consternation," Mr Tuttle says.

Positions changed on August 5th, when Iona appointed Mr David James (45), to the position of CFO and treasurer of the company. A native of Massachusetts, he came from Marcam where he was vice-president of finance and prior to that worked with Digital Equipment.

"David James has done a much improved job," says Mr Tuttle. "He is communicating with the community and telling his side of the story about what's going on in the company." Mr Raymond Pryor, a Wall Street investor relations consultant who is also a shareholder in Iona, says the share price dropped to its lowest at $11.50 last October 7th. He attributes some of that decline to Mr Tuttle's report.

"The analyst said he felt the company was straying from its original strategy and not relating well to shareholders," says Mr Pryor.

His view was that the company was too conservative in its approach to investor relations. "The reason a stock gets hit is purely a lack of information and Iona's investor relations department was not as proactive as it should have been." But he agrees that Mr James is "doing a better job" and the stock has now recovered. To achieve this Mr James says it was important to "have a plan and execute on that plan". But he admits it was often difficult for a foreign company to boost its visibility among US investors. He says one component of a good investor relations plan is to have just one player deal with the financial community. "People know who they are and what they will say. Otherwise they get confused," Mr James says. He adds that the CFO is "the only one who should talk about numbers and tactics".

Apart from that, he adds, there should be a handful of senior management who deal with investors on a regular basis so the "message is consistent".

Another piece of advice from Mr James is that if a company gets to a certain size, say $200 million in market capital, it should appoint a full-time investor relations officer to deal with basic requests, orchestrate events and project the image of the company. Last summer, Iona appointed Ms Alexandra Blake to that full-time position.

Another tack for a company is to hire an investor relations consultant to help with the clarity of messages, to organise logistics and to follow-up after the investors' day. Iona has hired a local Massachusetts firm called Sharon Merrill Associates to take on this role.

Mr Colin Newman, Iona's director of marketing, says floating on Nasdaq was like graduating from university. "We still have a long way to go," he adds.

The reason management chose Nasdaq rather than other stock markets, he explains, was because most of the major software players are listed on Nasdaq and Iona as a company has always focused on the US where it sells 70 percent of its products. It now has four offices there in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., New York and San Mateo, California.

Since writing last year's report, Mr Tuttle has changed his tune. He has followed the changes made by Iona, prompting him to say: "The company has upsided most of its estimates over the last four quarters. Relative to other software IPO's, Iona has done extremely well."