Quarterly Earnings Presentation Design
Earnings presentations aren’t just about the numbers.
They’re about delivering a story that conveys your business’s performance in a compelling way. While data will always be central to Earnings slides, structuring your deck around a narrative makes it easier to put performance in context—especially during the ‘not-so-good’ times.
The trick is to create an Earnings presentation design that’s flexible enough to accommodate a mix of data and story, while adapting to changing performance each quarter.
We’ll work with you to create an enduring, adaptable Earnings presentation that you can easily edit as performance and narratives change over time.
Based on how your management team uses Earnings slides, we’ll adapt the flow of your presentation. Whether management refers to slides during Earnings calls or sends the deck to analysts and investors to read on their own, we’ll also tailor the structure and information density to your specific use case.
IROs at Major Public Companies
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Principles for A Successful Earnings Deck
Here’s what the most successful Earnings decks focus on:
Story and Structure
Earnings decks need structure and narrative. A compelling story is what holds attention and helps put numbers into context. Although your business’s performance and accompanying narrative may change quarterly, your deck can (and should) be adaptable to quarterly earnings presentations.
A Balanced Approach to Data
Earnings slides are typically quant-heavy. But even with a presentation full of data, there are ways to make slides easy-to-understand. Keep your deck visually engaging by sticking to analyst-friendly design principles.
Keep it Short (But Include an Appendix)
You can convey the core earnings data and narratives necessary while keeping your deck short and to the point. But do include an appendix, which will allow your deck to provide all data needed when it’s forwarded to analysts and investors.
From Our Valued Clients
OUTKREATE redesigned ITT’s earnings release and 2022 investor day presentations. They created a modern, minimalist style for the presentation that matched the simple style our CEO desired. Our stakeholders were impressed by the sleek design and clear messaging. We have since deployed the new look throughout our IR materials. Highly recommend the OUTKREATE team.
Mark Macaluso
VP, Investor Relations
ITT Inc.
"Verra Mobility engaged Outkreate for our July 2022 Investor Day and we were incredibly pleased with the results. Outkreate delivered a visually appealing presentation that was highly effective at telling our story. Beyond design expertise, they brought strong business acumen and strategic thinking. Process was efficient and required very little oversight."
Mark Zindler
VP, Investor Relations
Verra Mobility
“For AWI’s 2022 Investor Day, OUTKREATE delivered slides that were clear and visually engaging, and successfully communicated to our audiences. With OUTKREATE doing the heavy-lifting on slide-design, my small team was able to work on higher-value tasks -- resulting in a successful Investor Day.”
Theresa Womble
VP of Investor Relations,
Armstrong Worldwide Industries
Common Earnings Presentation Design Mistakes
It’s easy to focus on the wrong areas when designing an Earnings deck.
Here are some common Earnings presentation design mistakes:
Most Earnings presentations have no structure. They’re a mix of standalone charts and graphs with few cues to help the audience follow along.
Without a structure, it’s easy for your investor and analyst audience to feel lost, and for your main messages to disappear among a jumble of slides.
It’s critical to have a “Key Messages” slide at the beginning of your presentation. This helps set the stage for the rest of your presentation, telling the audience what to pay attention to as the presentation continues.
Your Key Messages slide should give your audience a high-level overview of your quarter on a single page.
Remember—less is more.
If the primary use of your deck is to send it to investors and analysts after an Earnings call, it can be tempting to pack slides with information.
But too much information comes at the expense of clarity—even when the audience is reading the slides rather than attending a presentation.
Learn more about how we create impactful Investor Presentations
To view samples of our work and our pricing structure, download the OUTKREATE IR Solutions Deck.
How Outkreate works with clients
We’ll start by examining your goals and key messages, as well as any issues you’re having putting together your Earnings slides.
Below is an overview of how we typically help clients. Depending on your needs, we can do more or less.
We start each engagement with a discovery process.
For us to most effectively help you, we need to understand the goals you have for your Earnings presentations, the key messages you want to convey, and any common questions you’re getting from analysts.
We also want to understand your internal workflow and any issues that are coming up as you build out your Earnings slides. By looping us into your process, we can help design a solution that makes it easy for the IR team to develop earnings slides—not only now, but in future quarters too.
The best place for us to start is in building out a Key Messages slide. This sets the tone and messaging for the rest of the presentation. As a part of designing the Key Messages slide, we’ll recommend a flow and structure for the deck as a whole.
We also recommend best practices for each slide to ensure your audience can clearly absorb your message.
We want to make sure the content you put together isn’t being hampered by design issues.
Unless you’re constricted by brand guidelines, we may recommend an upgraded visual design for your deck to help your presentation stand out.
As presentation specialists, we can optimize each aspect of your design to maximize its impact. We know exactly how to take data-heavy slides and turn them into visually-engaging designs that incorporate human-centered design principles.
Earnings Presentation Case Study
We created an upgraded Earnings presentation for a global leader in technology components manufacturing.
The client had a new CEO from Europe who wanted a more minimalist “Scandinavian style” look for their Earnings presentation. They wanted to upgrade the look of their Earnings and Investor Day presentations ahead of an upcoming Investor Day event.
We upgraded the presentation from a dated design to a more modern, clean, minimalist style, while also working with the client to improve the content.
By reducing the amount of information on each slide, we were able to convey the client’s message more clearly and impactfully. We also added easy-to-digest visuals to help the audience make sense of the data being presented.
To organize the presentation and help the audience navigate it, we incorporated clean icons and images throughout. This helped visually convey the story and elevated the company’s branding.
We designed the new version of the Earnings presentation within an edit-friendly PowerPoint template, allowing the IR team to update slides effortlessly in future quarters.
After working together on the Earnings deck, the IRO also hired us to design the company’s Investor Day presentation.
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More Earnings Presentation Projects
Do you want to create more impact on your next Earnings call?
If so, right now is a good time to get game-day ready.
Let us help you upgrade your presentation’s structure, content, and design to help analysts and investors get clarity on your key messages.
Book a 1-on-1 session with Harry, where he will walk through your Earnings Presentation and provide actionable feedback to elevate it.
