Lockheed Martin impresses Wall Street analysts, investors with tradeshow-style conference

In early 2011, Lockheed Martin decided that the forthcoming shift in defense spending to other areas of the federal budget warranted an extraordinary effort “to protect our stock.” Team members felt that “we need[ed] to ensure that analysts [and] investors understand how diverse and robust our product portfolio is … to weather these challenges better than other defense firms.”

They converted a 30,000-square-foot test facility on Lockheed’s Moorestown, N.J., campus into “a dynamic product showcase [for] 35 key products” and invited 238 analysts and the top 100 institutional stockholders from Wall Street investment banks to see for themselves in May of 2011.

Their objectives:

• Garner attendance from 20 percent of Lockheed’s top 25 institutional stockholders. Result: They got 40 percent, double their goal.
• Motivate the writing of favorable research reports by analysts after the show, reports holding messages about the depth, diversity and potential of Lockheed’s ES products. Result: All attending firms published reports, with vital positives messages in every report.
• Exercise a positive influence on Lockheed’s stock price. Result: Lockheed’s report on the show emphasizes, “While it’s virtually impossible to tie attendance and reports to stock price, we’re confident we provided the information investors and analysts needed to understand how we would cope with the coming challenges.”

This targeted effort, and its stellar results, earned Lockheed Martin the honor of Best PR Presentation to a Financial Analyst in the 2012 PR Daily Awards.

The team that accomplished all this included Nancy Nelson (lead), Kathleen Baier, Antoinina D’Amico, Caroly Fray, Wendy Kershner, Jill Krugman, Don McClain, Len Rizzo, Vikki Sanders, Dan Scully and Warren Wright. The budget was considerable, but Lockheed felt the extraordinary circumstances validated the extra expense.