Hear David Grunfeld and Mark Hayes discuss how individual investors have a role to play for companies within their investor relations strategy.

Originally published to YouTube on Feb. 12, 2026

In this edition of Elevating IR, David recaps his experience at the recent PIF Forum in Saudi Arabia and he and Mark discuss global impacts of the expanding global capital markets access.

Originally published on Feb. 19, 2026.

Elevating IR discussion on how companies can best report the ROI on their AI investments.

Originally published on Feb. 5, 2026.

Mark and David talk about how public companies should frame the potential negative impacts of AI on the business to drive confidence and valuation resilience.

Originally published on Feb. 26, 2026.

Ahead of NIRI's Annual Conference in Chicago, Mark Hayes and David Grunfeld sat down to discuss what investor relations best practices look like in the Middle East right now, and what global IR teams can learn from them.

Here are a few themes from the Elevating IR conversation worth carrying into your next earnings call:

- Middle East capital markets are resilient and the IR practices emerging from the region offer a useful framework for any management team preparing for Q2 earnings.

- The IR story must now carry a resilience layer. Growth narratives alone are no longer sufficient. Investors are asking sharper questions: supply chain exposure, margin sensitivity to logistics costs, balance sheet durability under sustained volatility.

- The AI question has evolved. Investors are no longer asking whether you are using AI. They are asking whether AI is improving your economics and competitive position.

- Management credibility looks different today. What investors are looking for from leadership has shifted materially from two or three years ago, with greater emphasis on strategic foresight, adaptive capacity, and the ability to pull multiple levers when conditions deteriorate.

Originally published on Jun. 3, 2026.

David Grunfeld and Mark Hayes discuss the valuation narrative gap on this episode of Elevating IR. Together they unpack one of the most significant structural shifts in investor relations today in relation to the gap.

The data behind this is striking. Across the companies Breakwater analyzed, roughly 65% of valuation reset events now occur outside of an earnings call. And the primary driver is not a miss on reported results, it is investors concluding that the thesis no longer holds.

The implication for how IR teams structure their communications is substantial. What investors are actually trying to underwrite, risk and resilience, strategic actor exposure, durable growth architecture, competitive moat, is largely absent from prepared remarks.The companies that recover from valuation reset events in roughly 99 days share a common characteristic. They have built the communication architecture to answer the question investors are actually asking, which is not what changed, but why the thesis still holds.

Originally published on Jun. 3, 2026.

In this episode of Elevating IR, David Grunfeld and Mark Hayes examine one of the most significant shifts underway in IR. The collapse of the best practice as a durable standard.

Breakwater's global research makes the case plainly. Only 5% of respondents believe a best practice is something defined externally. 46% said a practice is only valid if it improves investor understanding. And the half-life of an IR best practice has collapsed to roughly nine months. This means anything marketed as best-in-class for 2027 based on 2025 conditions is already obsolete.

This points toward a different model. An adaptive IR operating system that learns from every capital markets interaction and treats yesterday's practice as an input, not an answer. The question for IR teams heading into the second half of 2026 is not what best practice to adopt. It is whether their program is built to learn faster than the market changes.

Originally published on Jun. 3, 2026.