About IRG, LLC

IRG, LLC is a full-service corporate communications firm that provides investor relations and public relations services to nano-, micro- and small-cap companies, in a budget-conscious way, delivering the equivalent of in-house services typically available only to a large-cap company.  In 2012, IRG was acquired by Rodman & Renshaw Capital Group, Inc.  Operating within Rodman’s headquarters in midtown Manhattan, IRG continues to provide a full suite of traditional IR/PR and multimedia services for its clients.

Our History
Founded in 1996 as The Investor Relations Group, IRG LLC originated from a survey of 400 fund managers designed to determine what makes them invest in a company.  During this research, it was concluded that market cap, price, liquidity, stage of development or revenue were important factors affecting an investment decision.  However, without exception, each fund manager told also declared that the management team of the company mattered most.

Beginning with publicly traded clients under $500 million in market cap—and most trading below $100 million, with products in very early development—IRG was formed. We built an investor relations department focused on small-cap investors.  We targeted family funds, retail brokers, and certain funds as well as the shareholders of our clients’ peers—regardless of the amount of money under management.  We start by researching and creating detailed competitive analysis reports.  Then, by picking up the phone and using technology to our advantage, we book very targeted one-on-one meetings or teleconferences for our clients with fund managers, analysts and brokers who have anywhere from $250,000 to $5 billion or more under management.  These meetings have a long, strong history of increasing trading volume, creating sales of products and services, and introducing new partnership opportunities.

The public relations department at IRG is equally responsible for our clients’ overall success.  The media outreach effort is focused on making our corporate officers “thought leaders” within their respective industries.  Accordingly, our senior journalist staff writers will ghostwrite industry “issue” pieces, which our PR staff then places in a full array of relevant publications.  Media placement highlights secured by IRG’s public relations executives during the past 24 months include cover or feature articles in:  The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Newsday, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, TIME, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Newsweek, Allure, W, Reader’s Digest, Crain’s, Barron’s, PharmaVOICE, and R&D Directions; broadcast segments on CBS’s 60 Minutes, ABC’s 20/20, FOX News, Bill O’Reilly, Tech TV, NY1, Bloomberg TV, and CNBC’s Power Lunch; and thousands of other print, Internet (like thestreet.com), radio and broadcast media placements nationwide.  Every year, IRG delivers millions of dollars in advertising equivalency for its clients.

IRG’s goal is to raise the profiles of its publicly traded client companies.  We focus our energies on highlighting their disruptive technologies and best-of-breed management teams within the investment community and media-at-large.  Over 90% of IRG’s business has resulted from referrals by fund managers, bankers, consultants, advisors, board members or corporate officers.  IRG has particular experience with public companies whose market caps are $500 million or less.

Our Philosophy
IRG believes in blurring the lines between investor relations and public relations:  A media piece is only valuable if it can be shared with investors or other business partners while being perceived as a positive corporate development.  As such, we spend a tremendous amount of time to find the best ways to articulate the key corporate messages.  We then make sure that both the investment and media communities are aware of ongoing progress.  For example, if a media piece appears in a top trade publication, we make sure that investors who may not read that trade learn about the story nonetheless.  This tactic is crucial to building credibility via third-party endorsements.

IRG’s laser focus on daily performance results in:  creation of messages that connect, scheduling of pre-qualified road shows, origination of news, transformation of management teams into thought leaders, outreach to traditional and new media, and programs designed and tailored to suit smaller companies.  In order to ensure a productive and transparent working relationship with our clients, executive management teams receive a daily work summary at the end of every business day.

Best of Traditional and Cutting-Edge Social Media
IRG believes nothing will ever replace one-on-one meetings with a fund manager, analyst, reporter or producer.  Excellent writing and communication skills remain crucial as well.  However, the impact of the Internet cannot be ignored.  IRG is on the cutting edge of new media tactics that are incorporated into our programs to broaden our reach to investors and the media worldwide.  Our website IRGnews.com attracts a rapidly rising number of new visitors every month.  Our Twitter feed is in the Top 10% of Twitter feeds.  We maintain our own email list that has over 45,000 subscribers who have opted-in to receive our weekly newsletter, Eye on IRGnews.com.

By incorporating the best practices in both traditional and new media corporate communications, IRG delivers results for its portfolio clients.

Our Services:

Investor Relations

  • Targeted one-on-one investor meetings and conference calls with the top nano-, micro- and small-cap decision-making analysts and portfolio managers of corporate, business and family funds, using our proprietary competitive analysis approach (road shows).  We secure a minimum of eight to fifteen-plus pre-qualified meetings per month, for a total of 150 to 200+ unique introductions per year per company.
  • Access to IRG’s MicroCaptivations Wire of professional investors. Effectively IRG’s in-house, proprietary news service, of registered representatives, registered investment advisors, buy-side fund managers and analysts. 
  • A Comprehensive Peer (competitive) Analysis Report that provides detailed information about peer group companies including:  covering analysts and all reporting institutional investor holdings with full names, titles, addresses and other related contact information once contact is confirmed.
  • Development of wire-house analyst research coverage and inclusion in peer reports as a comparable company.
  • Corporate message refinement that is flexible, according to ongoing developments.
  • A Fact Sheet that is flexible, in terms of ongoing developments.
  • Investor presentations in PowerPoint/slide formats and PDF.
  • All written and edited shareholder communications, such as earnings releases, quarterly reports and other developments.
  • Coaching for investor meetings and conference calls.
  • Conference call coordination, including scripting, Q&A preparation, and all details for execution, including Webcasting.
  • Frank feedback collected from all road show meetings in order to help fine-tune corporate messaging.
  • Handling and screening investor inquiries.
  • Nurturing relationships with current and potential investors.
  • Mail and request fulfillment processing.
  • Introductions in the investment banking world.
  • Peer group/industry analysis provided on a regular basis.
  • Perception audits gathered from the investment community.
  • Strategic planning and implementation.
  • IRG establishes your company’s web presence through our award-winning website, IRGnews.com, and through major social networking and multimedia sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.

Public Relations

  • Unique news pieces and media pitches originated and written by our award-winning, well-published editorial staff (approximately 20+ pieces per year)—above and beyond writing normal “material” news announcements.
  • Ghostwritten/bylined papers and other high-level trade articles written by our senior writers.
  • Corporate, product and technology-related stories placed in targeted trade publications to build sales and partnerships.
  • National and regional trend pieces written and placed in leading magazines and newspapers.
  • Syndication stories and feature feeds to more than 16,000 newspaper and other print editors nationwide.
  • Original “feature feed” stories tying your company’s product or service to trends and national/world events.
  • Comprehensive social media outreach:  Leveraging of our strong presence, understanding and growing following across the major social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, etc.)
  • Dissemination of your news through your own specialized webpage on our website, IRGnews.com, and through our social networks, Eye on IRGnews.com (our weekly newsletter), RSS feeds and proprietary e-mail lists of uniquely targeted investors and media.
  • On-camera media training in our studios.
  • Financial news formats targeted 
  • Multiple three-minute CEO interviews as television-quality production reels for TV/cable and Internet that are produced and edited in our studios.
  • Background materials (B-roll) production for television, cable and trade events.
  • Profiles written of CEOs and other top company officers.
  • Crisis management plans.