Best of 2025: IR Insights You May Find Helpful as You Plan for 2026
To start the year, we pulled together the IR pieces that resonated most with IROs in 2025. We grouped them by theme (Earnings, IR Tools, Investor Thesis, Investor Days, and more) so you can scan fast and jump to what’s most interesting to you as you think of ‘26 priorities.
📌 On Quarterly Earnings
How IROs Are Amplifying the Earnings Story Beyond the Call
Throughout 2025, we saw IROs finding new ways to extend the earnings story beyond the traditional call, and this trend will continue. Companies like Shopify, Meta, Coinbase, and Reddit used leadership videos, hosted live retail-investor Q&A, and more to reach a broader audience.
Getting Your Earnings Presentation Right
Earnings season will kick off in a few weeks. If you use slides as part of your prepared remarks, this article looks at how to tell a story with numbers, not just a numbers story. It outlines a simple structure we’ve seen work across many companies, and offers a practical starting point you can adapt to your leadership’s style.
Visa’s IRO Built a System for Earnings Prep
A lot of IROs tell us they want a better system for earnings prep. Here’s what Visa’s IRO, Jennifer Como built. She shares her approach: early cross-functional alignment, disciplined Q&A work, and year-round scenario planning. It’s a practical way to move from quarterly scrambles to a more systematic process.
📌 On Investor Thesis, IR Storytelling
How to Talk About Your Moat the Way Investors Do
In 2026, if you want to sharpen how you talk about competitive advantage, this one’s worth your time. We break down how buy-side analysts talk about moats using companies like Costco, FICO, Ecolab, and Vulcan Materials. And yes, we listened to each of these Business Breakdowns episodes so you don’t have to. 🙂
Lessons from CAGNY 2025 (Investor Conference): A Playbook for Navigating Uncertainty in 2026
Preparing for a major investor conference in 2026? This case study shows how to keep your investment thesis intact during a period of market uncertainty. We break down how Hershey’s IR team framed their story at CAGNY 2025 during record cocoa prices and tariff uncertainty.
Distilling the Ecolab Investor Thesis: Lessons from a Buy-sider
Want to see what a well-structured investment thesis looks like? Todd Wenning (ex-Morningstar, Motley Fool, now CIO at KNA Capital) breaks down Ecolab’s using five lenses: megatrends, moat, management, financial performance, and business strategy. We pulled the key lessons you can apply.
📌 On Investor Days
Hallmarks of Best-in-Class Investor Days – as Shared by Experienced IROs
What makes a truly great Investor Day? Drawing on insights shared by IROs from Builders FirstSource and Pentair at NIRI 2025, we’ve organized their takeaways into two buckets: (a) deeper strategic considerations and (b) practical, tactical ideas. If you’re gearing up for an I-Day, you’ll find this useful.
I-Day Playbook Series: Crafting Your Main Message & Agenda
This two-part series breaks down the essentials of planning an effective Investor Day from a storytelling standpoint. First: how to define your main message, i.e., the key takeaways you want investors to remember. Second: how to structure your agenda to deliver that message through the right mix of presenters, topics, and formats. Each article walks through the ideas step by step, with real examples you can actually use.
4 Takeaways from Wendy’s Investor Day for Your Next I-Day
Wendy’s 2025 Investor Day is worth studying. They built a clear narrative around three strategic pillars, kept presenters aligned, and made the whole day feel cohesive. Here are four takeaways we’ve saved to our swipe file and plan to put to work on upcoming client I-Days. 🙂
📌 Emerging IR Trends from some our Favorite Thought Leaders
How ChatGPT is Shaping Reputation: Lessons for IROs from Jen Prosek
As AI tools become part of how investors do their homework, reputation is being shaped in new ways. Jen Prosek walks through how everyday IR content influences what ChatGPT and similar tools pick up. She talks about how being on podcasts helps people “meet you” faster, so the first call feels like the second and shares many more nuggets.
A Tech IRO's Bold Moves to Break the Routine in Investor Comms
Not every IR team is sticking to the same old routine. Affirm’s IRO, Zane Keller, has been experimenting in a good way. He replaced earnings scripts with shareholder letters, posted model walkthroughs on demand for analysts, and rolled out a few other moves that feel refreshingly different. We pulled four tactics that stood out.
Retail Investors Matter. Here’s What IROs Can Do About It
Retail investors now play a much bigger role in public markets. In this article, Mark Hayes from Breakwater Strategy outlines four common retail investor profiles and explains why treating them as one group no longer works. This offers a practical framework for engaging different retail investor segments.
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