Why growth matters in consumer-facing businesses: The power of ‘compounding’ and how steady, sustainable growth drives shareholder returns over time. The fact that top line growth, as opposed to pushing margins through lowering costs, is less bounded. The clear (almost linear) relationship between organic growth expectations and earnings multiples.
Martin will be sharing how the CFO thinks about growth and the levers that can be pulled, breaking down organic sales growth into price, volume and mix. Martin will talk to the implications for marketers and the creative community - the need to plug in to the financial/shareholder agenda rather than stand apart from it.
Martin is an experienced strategist and analyst, bilingual in the not-always-congruent languages of marketing and finance. He is a former advertising planner, strategy consultant and latterly top-rated equity analyst in Consumer Goods and City AM's 'Analyst of the Year' in 2022.
At the start of his career, Martin was running focus groups on cereal bars. By the end, he was working at an investment bank, weighing the share prices of the likes of Nestle and Unilever. Over the 40+ years in between he had the privilege of working for some blue chip names, amongst them Boase Massimi Pollittt (BMP), OC&C, Investec & Jefferies.
In 2022, he was ranked in the top 3 out of more than 50 analysts covering European consumer goods in the respected 'Institutional Investor' survey and was voted the City's 'Analyst of the Year' by City AM newspaper. He has an MBA from London Business School, where he graduated with Distinction in 1993.
