The Fisc

Municipal issuers benefit greatly when they connect to and engage with bond investors. Investors always appreciate it when they can find the most current information quickly. Having and executing a superior investor relations (IR) strategy is key to helping issuers deliver this information easily to investors. And in today’s busy and crowded (thus, competitive) muni market, getting this right can help issuers gain an edge when taking their bonds to market.

BondLink has touted the vast benefits to municipal issuers of a dedicated investor relations website to connect and engage bond investors. The BondLink platform makes many of the best practices from the corporate and equity markets instantly accessible to muni issuers. And we’re still just getting started.

We recently released a trio of enhancements to our market-leading platform, and they’re already gaining traction among our clients. One of these important new capabilities is Digital Roadshows.

How much do you spend on roadshows when you come to market? What if you could put that money back to work in your community instead?

At NO EXTRA COST to BondLink clients, our client issuers can work with our customer success team to develop slides, record voice-over and host investor presentations directly on your BondLink-powered IR site. This brings your presentations right to the people – the investor community – where it can make an impact! Plus the dollars you would traditionally spend with typical vendors for a roadshow can redeployed to other areas.

Part of my role here at BondLink, as I’m based on the West Coast, is to attend industry events – such as the recent Washington State GFOA conference. As a former issuer, I truly understand the difficulty many leaders face coming to market and attracting the highest numbers of buyers to achieve the lowest borrowing costs.

In the numerous conversations I had at the conference, I was amazed to discover that issuers simply are skipping the step of providing a roadshow for investors. “The costs are too high” or “we don’t see the value” kept coming up as rationale. Yet, most of these issuers who weren’t producing a roadshow, were producing agency presentations. Quite literally, the information is already put together; it just needs to be formatted for the investor!

It became clear that there a remains a belief that the deal’s credit rating is the end-all, be-all for a successful bond sale. Our point is, if you’re putting this together for the agencies, why not offer it up to the investor community? Fundamentally, it’s all public information. Why is it OK to share with ratings agencies, yet not with the people who will actually be buying your debt?

Investors presentations are an invaluable opportunity to tell the buy-side the complete story of your credit, your deal and your projects. It’s extremely prevalent on the corporate side, and in my experience, a terrific way to broaden and diversify your investor base. And now with BondLink, you can get all the value of a roadshow without any additional cost to your community.

As we’ve seen in the sales calendar the last couple weeks, deals of all shapes and sizes – and ratings – are available to investors. Issuers need to find a way to stand out from the crowd. Your BondLink-powered IR website is a great first step. Now let’s turn your agency presentation into an informative investor roadshow, and host it right on your dedicated site. You know how to tell your story, and now you can take it right to your investors as well.