5 best practices for post-IPO business performance

As a public company, your financial reporting process is going to be a business-critical function. You’ll be presenting results to an expanded group of stakeholders, including SEC counsel, your company’s audit committee, external auditors, Wall Street analysts and your own investors.

In some cases, notably external auditor and audit committee reviews of quarterly filings, you’ll need to align your reporting process with stakeholder timelines and document their approvals.

Staying realistic about "readiness"

• Many post-IPO companies are familiar with the audit process and have confidence that their usual level of audit readiness will pass muster with these stakeholders. There are some good reasons, however, to take a more cautious approach when assessing your firm’s audit readiness:
• Many post-IPO companies aren’t prepared for the much closer scrutiny associated with a Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) audit—a milestone for every business that aspires to be a public company.
• Many companies also need time to adapt to the PCAOB independence a public company must maintain with its external auditors.
• As a public company, your auditors can no longer assist with financial reporting and disclosures in order to remain independent—meaning that a post-IPO company’s management team must take ownership of its financial reporting, disclosure and remediation activities.
• Finally, a post-IPO company should recognize that relying on less robust, cash-basis interim financial closes is no longer an option. Public company reporting requirements are much stricter—and addressing them can require a great deal of internal process change.

Companies often view SOX compliance strictly as an issue for the accounting team. Discarding this misconception is one of the most important steps a management team can take to prepare for the rigors of reporting and compliance as a newly public company. 

A process that pays for post-IPO success

SOX compliance is an inherently detailed and complex process that can make significant demands of a newly public company’s bandwidth and resources. Getting a jump on SOX compliance has a significant upside for a pre-IPO company: giving management an opportunity to find and fix potential weaknesses in a company’s control environment before going public.

Given the level of effort associated with meeting the requirements of SOX compliance, this is a process where planning early is always a smart move.

For most companies, completing an IPO means taking a very different approach to financial planning and forecasting. The focus shifts from putting a spotlight on P&L to understanding the balance sheet as a whole—including cash flow forecasts and their implications.

It takes teamwork to shift a paradigm

For most newly public companies, this paradigm shift can be a major challenge on multiple levels. First and foremost, post-IPO FP&A demands the ability to meet a much higher standard for accurate reporting, planning and forecasting than a private company is accustomed to achieving. Post-IPO FP&A also demands a strong grasp of KPIs to allow for a clearer understanding of performance by stakeholders and investors. At the same time, a post-IPO company’s planning process usually moves at a much faster pace as stakeholders demand to see results more quickly after the financial close. And for management, post-IPO planning is a game with much higher stakes—one where sloppy or inaccurate forecasts can have a devastating impact on investor confidence and share prices.

All this means that effective post-IPO planning and forecasting will require a cooperative effort that reaches beyond the walls of the finance organization (e.g., integrating data from the tax team to ensure accurate forecasts). It also means there is less room for error; when mistakes happen, they can have a costly impact on a company’s share prices.

Given the level of effort associated with meeting the requirements of SOX compliance, this is a process where planning early is always a smart move.

Choosing how to handle your newly public company’s tax function is a strategic decision with an enormous impact on your long-term ability to plan for growth, operate profitably and manage risk.

Handing off wins, hands down

For most post-IPO companies, handing off the tax function to a qualified tax advisor isn’t just a good decision; it’s the only decision that really makes business sense.

Consider the following points in favor of outsourcing:

• A public company’s tax return positions will often receive greater scrutiny than they did as a privately held company.
• Tax rules tend to evolve separately from accounting rule changes—compounding the complexity and risk.
• Newly public companies that plan to drive growth through M&A activity must deal with special tax-related challenges (e.g., purchase accounting, business combination accounting) that increase the risk of misstatements and regulatory scrutiny.
• Dealing with these and other tax-related challenges can distract a CFO and finance team from directing a company’s growth strategy and consume resources better spent elsewhere.
• Finally, for companies focused on international expansion and growth, it’s essential to devise a strategy for addressing international tax implications before moving ahead with expansion plans—allowing a “look before you leap” approach to post-IPO tax planning.

It’s impossible to overstate how important it is for a public company to protect the security, integrity and privacy of its business data stores. Your company’s ability to ensure the integrity of its financial data is a prerequisite for accurate and reliable financial reporting and filings. 

Getting your data house in order

Larger, more established companies generally have their data houses in order (except when they don’t—witness the costly and catastrophic aftermath of any major data-breach incident over the past 20 years). For newly public companies, however, this can be a stubborn challenge to overcome for a few reasons:

• Smaller companies typically mean smaller IT teams where each member has broader areas of responsibility. This can work against efforts to implement best-practice controls and access policies.
  
• Newly public companies tend to overlook the potential impact of third-party systems and data stores on their own financial reporting controls and governance.
• Rapid growth and limited resources may result in pre-IPO companies relying on data systems that evolve organically, adopting tools and capabilities without a consistent focus on access control, change management or integration/automation tools.

Fortunately, there are a number of paths a post-IPO company can follow to adopt a consistent, systematic, strategic approach to data management and security. But it’s imperative to move quickly to close the holes in your post-IPO firm’s data strategy, given what’s at stake.

Given the level of effort associated with meeting the requirements of SOX compliance, this is a process where planning early is always a smart move.