Nicholas Mead has over 20 years of experience in business development and investor relations, primarily in the global mining investment sector, as well as in property and infrastructure. Nicholas started his career as a political risk analyst for WMC Resources Ltd in Brazil on the CVRD privatization opportunity. He then worked as an investment analyst at AMP Asset Management and as a mining analyst for Cazenove in Sydney, Australia. Following that, he worked for The Sentient Group, a global private equity investor in the mining sector, where he became Partner for Investor Relations concentrating on developing and maintaining relations with investors, consultants, and stakeholders. During his time at Sentient, he directly managed the raising for three separate investment funds totaling more than US$2bn. Since his time at Sentient, he has worked with start-ups and existing businesses in the mining, property, and infrastructure sectors to either raise funds or to advise on investor and stakeholder management. An Australian citizen, he has also lived in Brazil, the UK, and Canada.
Before bringing on Nicholas to handle investor relations at Mawson Gold last year, investor relations was being handled off of the corner of their Executive Chairman’s desk, who was also acting CEO at the time. Junior mining companies always need to raise capital, and at Mawson Gold, there’s a cyclical nature tied to the winter drilling program in Finland. Nicholas’ role includes constantly looking for new shareholders, as well as maintaining relationships with existing ones, in conjunction with the Executive Chairman and CEO.
Potential investors were being managed through cumbersome Excel spreadsheets, and bringing on Nicholas meant also bringing on a platform that could support their IR needs.
“I did a survey of investor relations platforms to see what was out there and see what the best fit would be for us. We chose Irwin because of its functionality, the ability to keep track of interactions with potentials and shareholders, whether it’s phone calls, emails, or meetings - this was important so that we could keep a history of contacts that we could go back and reference”.
According to Nicholas “the most important thing was the ability to find fund managers who were investing in other similar companies and getting that information so that targeting new investors is made easier for us -- if you’re sitting behind a spreadsheet and trying to track the internet to see who’s investing in these companies, well, it’s just not possible”.
Nicholas looked at a number of other IR platforms, but they just didn’t suit the needs of a company like Mawson Gold, “Irwin was well targeted to companies like ours, the other providers couldn’t really serve us. Some of the larger companies were just too big, they offered IR tools that were just not relevant and the price was too high since they had features we didn’t need built-in”.
Mawson Gold needed to understand where they sit within their sector -- and previous to his joining, there wasn’t really much understanding of whether they were doing a good job or not. “Irwin has allowed us to understand what the industry standard is, and where we sit within that”.
A major component of the success of Nicholas’ and Mawson Gold’s IR program is the ability to centralize all of their interactions. “It’s very easy to go back and say, who did we speak to and what did they say?” says Nicholas.
“With our most recent conference season, I also heavily used the itinerary builder and tearsheets so that my executive team was prepared”, Nicholas said. Before conferences, he often looks up the meeting attendees in Irwin to see what they hold, and because that information is included in the itinerary and tearsheets, it leads to better meetings.
Nicholas also heavily uses the task functionality to follow-up with people after meetings, and the IRM allows him to have consistent communication “I link the tasks with the inputted information during the meeting so I can be specific about what was said during the meeting and referencing what was said”.
“My colleagues keep asking - what does Irwin say?”
One of Nicholas’ favorite features within Irwin is the targeting functionality, and how it’s more comprehensive thanks to Irwin’s extensively researched database of investors.
“Irwin is helpful at looking at peers and seeing who they have received their capital from,” Nicholas said. “We weren’t doing much outreach previously, but now that I’ve got Irwin I’ve been able to look around, and our number of investors has increased. The Fit Score works really well, I often run through those lists and reach out”.
He even shares a particular example where he was looking through his distribution list and recognized an investor he had seen within Irwin: “thanks to Irwin, I knew who he was and what his holdings are, so I reached out and had a great conversation with him”.
Given the recent news that Mawson Gold has decided to maximize shareholder value by spinning out its Australian assets into a new entity, Southern Cross Gold via an IPO, we checked in with Nicholas on how Irwin would help with that project:
“I will be looking at peer holdings within Irwin to see who holds micro Australian companies, and that will help target new investors to advance exploration and development.”
“Go for it, absolutely. I would fully recommend using Irwin. It’s simple, iterative, and easy-to-use. The service provided is fantastic, and I would highly recommend it”.
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