After the Bell: What Changes for the CFO Post-IPO?

You often hear people describe the IPO process as a marathon, where executives spend months engaging the investment community, markets and regulators to ensure a smooth entry into life as an issuer. However, there is no finish line once your business is listed; the work continues. In fact, many describe the post-IPO stage as like a treadmill because it is the time the company and its internal stakeholders get to grips with the cycle of the financial calendar.  

For the CFO, a listing brings new responsibilities and increased scrutiny. With additional responsibilities to communicate with the markets and investors, you must be diligent in how you prepare your messaging to maintain the trust of shareholders and meet your compliance requirements, too.  

Navigating investor communication and regulatory disclosure is not a one-time event, it becomes an ongoing operational discipline. This article discusses the challenges for CFOs post-IPO and provides guidance on how to navigate this new world in an effective manner that sets the business up for success on the capital markets

Going public is a gear shift for all internal stakeholders. It opens up a new world of regulatory requirements and responsibilities that CFOs and their colleagues must prepare for as they undertake the IPO process. Some of the new expectations on a CFO after a business goes public are: 

• Every word of the CFO’s public messaging is scrutinised by the industry press and the investment world, trying to ascertain any information that might not be explicitly communicated. This means CFOs must plan public statements carefully and be precise in how they present them.  

• The CFO has to take co-ownership of the company’s external narrative. In collaboration with the IR lead and CEO, they must develop messaging that contextualises results and provides a positive and cohesive vision of the short-, medium- and long-term future of the company. 

• The audience expands for the CFO’s declarations. You are not just talking to investors, but also to analysts, regulators and your internal stakeholders, who can be affected by public and market perception shifts as a result of public communication.

2. Common Post-IPO Challenges  

These new requirements feed into the challenges that CFOs face after their companies go public. They include:  

3. The quarterly disclosure cycle

Once you undertake your listing, you enter a complex process to meet regulatory and shareholder expectations during the quarterly earnings announcements. What might at first seem like a simple disclosure task is actually a multi-channel communication workflow that you undertake under pressure every three months.  

For the CFO, the cycle works like this:  

4. How to navigate the post-IPO world for a CFO 

With these growing responsibilities and expectations, forward-thinking CFOs are looking towards greater collaboration with their colleagues to create a more rounded and better-informed process. Moving away from department-specific solutions is essential as the roles of those functions merge, with a preference for a shared infrastructure that aligns IR, finance, legal and compliance departments in one communication flow.  

The idea is to create a workflow where you can reduce manual risk whilst presenting a consistent and coherent investor narrative with the ability to prove compliance at every step.  

Market disclosures are a compliance obligation, but they are much more than that. It is an opportunity to engage the investment world and you should view it as a strategic workflow, powered by collaborative processes that make the most of your internal skillset, no matter the size of your team. Find a process that reduces the administrative and logistical burden and allows you more time to shape the story behind the numbers.  

5. How IR Reach helps  

IR Reach includes:  

• EuroStockNews, to streamline the drafting and distribution of both regulatory and non-regulatory disclosures to all necessary bodies and outlets. 

• LiveEquity, which showcases important financial and IR information on the company website with dynamic, real-time widgets for increased transparency. 

• IR website design from Inderes, providing a fully compliant, professional-standard investor website tailored to individual businesses, sectors and pieces of legislation. It is easy to update so you can maintain transparency and engage more effectively with investors. 

• IR events, powered by our partner, Inderes. You can deliver polished, reliable online and hybrid investor events, such as earnings calls, with end-to-end support from technical experts. 
• Capital Market Compliance Certification: Educate internal teams on evolving reporting obligations and how to manage them effectively.

Try IR Reach today to see how it helps CFOs rise to the challenge of post-listing life. 

6. Conclusion

The CFO is now a communicator, a strategist and a beacon of trust for shareholders and analysts. You need a reliable, repeatable and secure process for making disclosures and managing market perception. In order to achieve this, you can implement IR Reach, an all-in-one solution from Euronext Corporate Solutions in partnership with Inderes. It helps CFOs create disclosures in a more streamlined manner and without having to worry about meeting regulatory requirements.  

7. References and further reading

• How data leverages your equity narrative 

• Effective investor outreach 

• How to deliver bad news to shareholders 

• Develop a strong compliance strategy 

• How to run a successful earnings call