David Davies is the lead director on investor relations and has responsibility for managing OMV’s European investor relations operation.

How involved are you with investor relations?

IR reports to me directly at OMV. I am present at 80 to 90 per cent of meetings with analysts and investors. The head of IR, Ana-Barbara Kuncic, the CEO or divisional heads take the lead sometimes.

What did you need to add to your skillset to take on IR?

It helps to be straight, open and honest with people, which I try to be anyway. When I was FD designate at London International Group, the outgoing FD told me “There’s no magic to it, is there?” and I agree.

The truth has many variations and there are many different ways to communicate an event – you have to do it so it can be clearly understood so that people hearing it can form views as quickly as possible. Analysts don’t like you rambling as they are forced to think in a linear way.

What is the hardest aspect of IR and what has proved more tricky than you initially imagined?

It is never nice to disappoint analysts or investors. I’ve had a couple of profit warnings in my time, and when a market is slowing, that’s no big surprise.

We were recently proposing a transaction that did not have widespread support from analysts and shareholders, and we had a tough time explaining it.

If you believe something is right, you have to tough it out. They were not enamoured with our aggressive growth strategy five years ago but it has returned massive value for the group.

How has the IR requirement evolved in the time you have been at the company?

We had meetings with investors initially who were “OM-who?”.

We don’t tend to get that now – any energy investor would know who we are and we get our share of attention from the leading investors.

So, on the one hand, we now have no problem getting interest, but this places more demands on us as we are followed by a lot more senior analysts.

Another complication expansion has brought is having subsidiaries which make their own IR announcements. We have to make sure that announcements are cleared at all levels of the company.

How is your IR function structured?

Ana-Barbara Kuncic has three people supporting her. We are now starting to place people in more specialised sectors in the IR department.

That’s why we appointed someone who was previously an analyst – it is very much a deliberate way of using a poacher-turned-gamekeeper asset.

What are your tips for nurturing the relationship with a) analysts and b) your IR officer?

The FD should be open to taking time to get to know analysts and not to take personally any uncomplimentary comments – everyone has their job to do, after all.

Ironically, some of the analysts I have the closest relationship with are not actually such big fans of what we are trying to do. Having that kind of relationship is very important; you need a degree of closeness and informality.

How much of your time do you devote to IR?

On the road, it’s about 90 per cent. Across the year, with planning and preparation, it’s around 25 per cent.

Related tags: communication, analysts, omv, fd, shareholders, investor relations,