Multi-award winning IRO, Deborah Belevan, IRC, CPA, joined Duolingo in 2021 as VP, IR, two weeks before the IPO.  Since then, Duolingo has seen exponential growth in both its share price and subscriber base.  Debbie is an active NIRI Board Member. 

In April 2025, Debbie and Duolingo swept the IR Impact Awards’ board – Best Overall IR – Midcap, Best IR – Technology and Best IR Officer – Midcap.

Duolingo launched in 2012 and has since become the leading mobile learning platform globally.  The app has organically become the world’s most popular way to learn languages and the top-grossing app in the Education category on both Google Play and the Apple App Store.  Since its IPO, Nasdaq-listed Duolingo’s market cap has risen from $6.5 billion to over $15 billion today.

While Duolingo wasn’t your first IPO, it must have been a baptism of fire, joining two weeks beforehand?

Joining the company at such a pivotal moment was the perfect opportunity to get up to speed on our history, products, and culture – directly from our co-founder, Luis – and to hear firsthand the types of questions investors had. It was very clear from the start that there’s a strong sense of mission in everything we do.

Fortunately, in 2021, the roadshow was entirely virtual, which meant I could juggle IPO meetings alongside our internal “Nuoversity” onboarding sessions. It was a busy first week to say the least.

Another positive, Duolingo was already a very beloved brand with compelling growth so I was excited to be stepping into a role where my responsibility was to articulate that in a way the investment community could appreciate.

Discuss the changes you’ve seen at Duolingo since the IPO.

First of all, going public brings a new level of discipline for any company because now you’re accountable for your strategy, your forecasts and your execution.

We’ve grown a lot in terms of scale, internal sophistication, global reach and in our ambitions, expanding beyond language learning now to other subjects. So, we’ve evolved from being language focused to a broader learning platform.

We’ve matured as a public company – refining our investment thesis, developing new investor communications, and building out a cadence that includes a quarterly Zoom call and a shareholder letter.

Despite the growth, what hasn’t changed is the creativity, or the intense focus on building a genuinely great product.  Our increased market cap means that we are now on the radar of larger investors.   While the number of passive investors has increased due to our inclusion in a number of indices, which increases volatility, we’ve got a great roster of loyal shareholders.  Many of our IPO investors are still our top holders, which speaks to the strength of the long-term story.  We are proactive and have recently hosted more targeted outreach like we did with Phoenix Investor Relations in Europe, and we now tailor our message to different types of investors.

Any common investor concerns?

The durability of our growth and how much of the TAM we can capture. As a freemium model, a lot of learners don’t pay, so today over 90% of our monthly active users are learning completely for free. People want to understand how are we going to monetize more people? Our mission is to make high-quality education universally available.  And by investing in the free user experience, we grow the funnel for paid users. It’s a long-term strategy.

Some investors ask about competition, but we have a strong brand and deep engagement.  Our data model is hard to replicate.  So, once people get to know us, they realise there’s little in the language learning space that compares to Duolingo.

How have you improved your ESG score since the IPO? 

At IPO, we just didn’t have the disclosures in place.  Our team felt the mission alone, free global education, was a compelling ESG story in itself. Our scores were mediocre because we weren’t getting credit for things we were doing, like data privacy and taking care of our employees, which obviously we do.

ESG investors loved the company, loved the story but were limited to how much they could invest unless we improved our scores. So, we started, putting out a corporate responsibility report and an impact fact sheet and our scores have improved significantly.

How do you convince investors that Duolingo is worth its premium valuation?

It’s not our job to justify our valuation.  Investors are best equipped to make that call. We focus on telling the story as clearly and transparently as possible. We emphasize how we’re positioned to grow for many years and how the product and strategy support that trajectory.

Our goal is to help investors understand the drivers of our business so we can achieve fair value for our equity over time.

How does working for a consumer company differ?

It’s a completely different culture in the best way.  First of all, the product is widely used, so we don’t need to explain what we do or who our user is – they are the user.

I love when investors start a meeting by showing me their streak.  There’s an immediate connection and they want to give their personal feedback and experience. So that’s amazing. Also, as a tech company, we’ve got incredible tools that help us do our jobs more efficiently.

Your co-founder Luis is still very much involved?

Luis is incredibly hands on. He’s deeply passionate about the product and attends all product review meetings.  Also, he’s heavily involved in the strategic decisions. Despite his success, he’s incredibly humble, very team oriented, and very kind.

From an IR standpoint, it’s really a gift having your investors hear directly from the visionary behind the company.  His academic background and long term thinking really resonate with our investors.  He’s very candid about what’s working in the business and the areas we still have to improve.

Duolingo seems to have a fun culture, discuss.

Our culture starts with our mission, but we also have a strong sense of playfulness

and it’s a fun place to work.  We have 5 operating principles that shape our culture and my favorite, is ‘Make it Fun’.  This playfulness even shows up in investor decks and earnings calls and that’s intentional.  We have incredible people, but we’re all a bit quirky.

Best thing about working at Duolingo?

Apart from the fun culture, working on something that millions of people love and benefit from. The type of people we hire (we have a very high bar!).  We want people who are very smart but also no egos.

We have industry leading low staff turnover and that’s because it’s just a great place to work. Being part of something that millions of people love and benefit from is pretty special.

Any challenges?

Creatively, analytically, culturally, you’re expected to perform.  It’s a very demanding job.

You won three awards at the recent IR Impact Awards – Best Overall IR – Midcap, Best IR – Tech and Best IR Officer – Midcap, discuss?

That was an amazing night. I did not expect to win one, let alone three awards.

Those awards are based on investor feedback,  so they were really a testament to how well we’re telling the story and executing the program. But it was 100% a team win.

You’re a NIRI board member with a wealth of experience, how do you share your knowledge?

I love being part of NIRI. It’s a collaborative community and a great platform to support the next generation of IR professionals. I love helping support others and find it really rewarding sharing my experience and passion with younger IR professionals.

IR wasn’t well known when I started – I stumbled into it from a financial reporting role in a gold mining company and quickly realized it was the coolest job in the company.  From speaking to the C-suite to geologists and getting to know the company inside out.

Advice?

Always be curious, ask  questions and don’t be afraid to reach out – whether to executives inside your company or investors on the outside. IR is about relationships, and relationships start with genuine interest.”

Anything you’d change?

Not a thing.

By Gill Newton, partner at Phoenix-IR. This interview also appeared in IR Impact on September 3, 2025.

Get in touch if you’d like to feature in our next “A Day in the Life of an IRO”.

Nobody knows the European investment community better than Phoenix-IR.

Denis Jasmin has been VP of IR at AtkinsRealis since 2007 and also chaired CIRI’s board from 2018 to 2020.  He discusses managing a corporate name change, investor days, activists and board level investor engagement.  He also provides tips for those wanting a career in IR and reveals the best and worst parts of the job.

 

 

 

 

 

AtkinsRéalis (ATRL.TO) is a >C$13 billion Canadian engineering services and nuclear company. The company deploys global capabilities locally to its clients and delivers unique end-to-end services across the whole life cycle of an asset including consulting, advisory & environmental services, intelligent networks & cybersecurity, design & engineering, procurement, project & construction management, operations & maintenance, decommissioning and capital. The breadth and depth of the company’s capabilities are delivered to clients in strategic sectors such as Engineering Services, Nuclear and Capital. The company, formerly known as SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., changed its name to AtkinsRéalis in September 2023. It was founded in 1911 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.

Denis Jasmin joined AtkinsRéalis in 1999 as Assistant Corporate Controller and became Vice President of Investor Relations in 2007. Denis is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) with 35 years of experience. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the École des Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC) in Montreal. In 2022, Mr. Jasmin earned the designation of F.CIRI, from the Canadian Investor Relations Institute (CIRI). (Fellow designation is the highest honour for investor relations professionals in Canada). Denis served as director of the National Board of Directors of CIRI from 2014 to 2020 and chaired its Board from 2018 to 2020. Denis started his career at PwC as an auditor and held finance roles in companies such as TELAV-ISTS, Thibault, Messier, and Savard & Associates Inc.

You transitioned from being a corporate controller (an internal role) to IR (an external role), was that challenging?

It was not too difficult. As Corporate Controller, I was in charge of the MD&A and I was reviewing projects. We were a lot smaller at that time, so I knew the numbers pretty well and I have a CPA background. So, really the challenge for me was about messaging and communicating numbers to the public because I didn’t have any communication training or background. But management was really helpful at that time. When you do one-on-ones with management, then you understand the messaging and what they want to communicate to investors.

So I learned on the spot and as I knew the numbers and the projects, it made the transition pretty easy for me.

Discuss the changes you’ve seen in investor relations since you started in the role in 2007?

There have been many changes between 2007 and today. When I started in IR, the CFO had to give me special projects to occupy me. Today I don’t have any free time! Also, back then, we were smaller and only had five sell-side analysts covering us compared to 10 today (which is the right number). Back then the sell-side covered maybe eight companies vs. between 15 and 20 today. In 2007, analysts had the time to chat about the strategy vs. today analysts are more model-oriented (given their time pressures during earnings season).

Given those time pressures, we need to provide better presentations with fuller disclosure as analysts/investors no longer have the time for a 20/30 minute chat with each company they cover around earnings. So that’s a big change and I think the quality of research has suffered as the sell-side just don’t have as much time as they used to.

Investor Days are also a relatively new phenomenon. I think it’s really important that you do an Investor Day and present the strategy of the company (rather than just site visits). Every three years is the right cadence for us as we present our three-year strategic outlook.

Another change is that today we have a lot more hedge funds, more activists and more ESG focused funds. That requires a bunch of information. And you also need to do ESG roadshows now.

There has also been change at the board level. They want to know a lot more about investors. What are we hearing? What are the investors interested in? We also do roadshows with the Chairman now. We never did that in the past. And I think just in general you have to do more roadshows today to make sure that you have the right message out there.

Social media can be another challenge. It doesn’t take much, some people posting something and all your messaging is wrong out there and that needs to be addressed quickly.

How did you navigate the name change from SNC-Lavalin to AtkinsRéalis?

That project was largely managed by our communications team and was a lot of work. From the IR perspective, I had to select a new ticker, and I organized a market open with the TMX the morning of the name change.

The company has a number of segments and end markets, how do you simplify the message for newcomers to the story?

It’s a complex business but management has been working for five years to simplify the structure of the company. For example, we have sold our oil and gas business, we have exited our construction (LSTK) projects etc. Now we define ourselves as an engineering and nuclear company. When I talk to investors, I always try to bring them to our purpose, which is ‘engineering a better future for our planet and its people’.

The story is mainly about energy transition/climate change and aging infrastructure. While we have eight end markets, most of our work is in transportation, buildings and places and defense.

Also, back in 2007, we were in 100 countries with offices in 30 countries (and that’s what got us into trouble!), but our focus is now mainly Canada, the US, the UK and the Middle East.

As a Canadian company, do you struggle to attract foreign shareholders?

It’s always been a challenge for me to get more foreign shareholders partly because we only trade on the TSX, so 80% to 85% of my shareholders are in Canada. For my peers, it’s pretty much the same. Also, there are a number of engineering firms in the US so it can be difficult to attract US investors. In Europe/UK, I target global fund managers.

Average turnover?

Our main shareholders have been invested in the stock for 15/20/25 years. Our top four shareholders represent about 45% of the shares outstanding. One of them is CDPQ (Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec) and they are very supportive of us. A recent change (since September 2024) is the number of hedge funds interested in the story due to our nuclear exposure. (Microsoft, Google and Amazon have recently struck deals with operators and developers of nuclear power plants to fuel the boom in data centers). There are only a few players in nuclear and AtkinsRéalis comes top of the list as we have a real product that can be delivered or built now.

The stock price has performed exceptionally well over the last three years. What’s the reason?

We saw an increase of 79% last year and 77% year to date this year.
#1 Simplification of the company
#2 Nuclear
#3 Free cash flow generation and delivering better margins.
#4 Our organic revenue growth is one of the best in the industry so that’s got investors excited.

How many conferences do you attend a year?

Eight conferences a year, mostly in Canada but we will try and do more US conferences.

Does your nuclear exposure make you uninvestible for some investors?

Only three years ago, some investors couldn’t invest in AtkinsRéalis because we derived more than 10% of our revenue from nuclear. Yet 35% of the nuclear revenue was actually waste management and decommissioning. Today investor attitudes have completely changed – they are less concerned about our exposure. Indeed, investors believe that nuclear is part of the solution to decarbonize the world and will enable governments to meet their net carbon targets between now and 2050.

Who are you key ESG data providers/partners?

The required questionnaires take up a lot of time, so we use six firms –
MSCI, EcoVadis, ISS, Sustainalytics, CDP climate change report and S&P Global.

I would note that in recent investor meetings, we rarely get asked ESG questions so that’s a new development.

In spite of the apparent decreasing interest in ESG from investors, we take ESG seriously. Since 2019/20 we’ve disclosed our ESG scores on our website and have pushed ourselves to improve both our disclosure and our scores.

How frequently do you host Investor Days?

Every three years when we present our three-year strategy. It’s big event to organise, it is costly and there’s a lot of management time involved. We do site visits in between. Our last Investor Day was in Toronto but hybrid (since Covid our Investor Days have been hybrid which works well).

What’s the best part of your job?

Talking about the business, the amazing, incredible projects that we do.
And obviously working very closely with the CEO and CFO and the decision makers in the company. Also, it’s always exciting traveling to major cities such as London and New York.

The worst part?

Unsubstantiated rumours as I then have to deal with the unnecessary panic from the sell-side/investors!

Any tips for in-house IR?

As well as knowing the financials of the company well, you also need to understand the business and/or the products and services. Be curious about all the details. Visit various offices and projects, go into the details so that when you talk to the market and investors, you’ve got all the details.

By Gill Newton, partner at Phoenix-IR. This interview appeared in IR Magazine.

Automatic Data Processing (ADP) is a $97 bn human resources management software company listed on Nasdaq. Danyal Hussain joined the firm in 2018 as senior director of IR, becoming vice president and head of IR in February 2020.
Prior to that, he was a vice president on the equity research team at Morgan Stanley, covering payment and processing names as well as fintech stocks. Before that, he co-founded the power generation consultancy Asyad Energy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He also worked at Ernst & Young and Johnson & Johnson. He has an MBA in finance from NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in accounting from Rutgers University.

Matthew Keating, senior director of IR, joined ADP in 2022. In July 2024, Hussain will become senior vice president of financial planning and analysis, while Keating will assume the role of vice president of IR.

How has ADP changed since you started working there?

From day one, we were involved in a high-profile proxy fight (Pershing Square held a stake in ADP from 2017 until 2019). That was a catalyst for a lot of change within the company and how we engage with our shareholders so that’s one major change I’ve experienced over these six years.
Separately, we now have more public competitors than ever and more analysts who cover our sector. And the third change I would point to is how we engage with investors, because I joined with an outside perspective; previous IROs had come from within ADP. We’ve taken a more proactive approach to engaging with both our sell-side analysts and our investors in terms of our willingness to participate in conferences and roadshows, as well as being more ‘out there’ as active participants in the capital markets.

Technically, ADP is now classified in the industrials or business services sector rather than technology – is this an issue?

It’s a recent change and it drives me mad. The Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) sector we sit in changed a year ago: the logic was that everyone wants to be a tech company or wants to be valued as a tech company, so ultimately what the GICS committee tried to do was push companies out of tech to align with the end-markets they serve. Because ADP serves all companies, it classified us in the professional services/business services sector, which sits within industrials.
One of the challenges we’ve always had with ADP is that we have a unique business model and for a long time we were one of only two public companies in this space. Therefore, we don’t fit cleanly in any coverage universe. We were always a hybrid of payments and software services. We are almost under-covered by the folks who really get deep on any one sector. It’s been a challenge for us for a long time.
It’s changed a little in the last few years, as the analysts who cover us now tend to be more software or tech-oriented. A large part of that is because software has become such a large universe that now you have more teams [covering it] and they can go deeper on subsectors, like human capital management in our case. Also, we now have more public competitors. So it’s getting better, but we are still covered by a hodgepodge of analysts with different levels of expertise.

How do you convince investors that ADP is worth its premium or valuation?

That’s a tough argument to counter as it is subjective. There is no clear set of comparisons you can use for ADP. A simple analysis versus, for example, the S&P 500 is a good place to start. Historically, ADP has always had a premium valuation in the market relative to other companies of similar growth profile. Therefore, investors have shown they’re willing to pay that premium as long as we can maintain our growth profile and all the other characteristics that people have come to appreciate about us: transparency, quality, good governance, and so on. And we are firmly committed to all of those. Usually, convincing a new investor that we are worthy does take time. Investors have to understand why this company has always traded at a premium and continues to do so.

What do you say to those who perceive ADP as a sleepy 75-year-old company?

In our history, there have been parts of our business that absolutely needed to be overhauled and reinvented, but you don’t become a 75-year-old company in a competitive industry without being able to reinvent yourself. Another change is that we now have a few key public competitors that like to talk loudly about how they’re doing versus ADP, which is something we have addressed – and have done so well – in recent years. The other thing we now do is demonstrate just how far our products have come. Investors want to know what the products look and feel like, and how they differ from competitors’ products, so demos validate what we’re saying and, when we do that, investors tend to be very impressed. The onus is on us to be able to go out and show investors that our products are not 75 years old; in many cases they’re only a few years old and may be on the most modern product and technology stack within the market. We create value by making a product that enables HR practitioners and personnel to function day to day.

How important is it to you to be a ‘dividend aristocrat’ – a company that pays a consistent and growing dividend?

This year, if all goes well and our board approves a dividend increase in November, we will hit 50 years of consecutive dividend increases, which would make us a dividend king or queen [a company with at least 50 years of growing dividend payments]. When we hit that milestone, we will be the first technology company to have such enduring and consistent growth.

How has having a new CEO and CFO impacted your IR activities?

I’ve been fortunate enough to help bring on two CFOs and one CEO. I think the opportunity is greatest when you’re bringing in an outsider because there’s an opportunity to help explain a large, complex business like ADP, which takes everybody a while to grasp. Those who already know ADP incredibly well need to learn how to better interact with investors and sell-siders and specifically how to articulate things in a way that will appeal to stakeholders. It’s almost more of an executive coach role.

Why do you think ADP has such a strong culture?

I think it comes both from the top end (CEO and board level) and from the core of what we do. And the average tenure of a CEO is 10 years, which helps. Also, we are fortunate in that we deliver something for the world that is unambiguously good. We help companies with something that is noble, which is to help them be better employers for their workers, and our associates know that what they’re doing creates value in the world. We all feel good about what we do, and we all operate in a client-centric organization. We know that if we don’t deliver an excellent experience for our clients, we won’t win in the market. I think a client-centric culture attracts a certain type of personality that is just a joy to work with. So from the bottom up we have tens of thousands of people who take joy in delivering value for clients; from the top down, we have been fortunate to have leaders who are empathetic and visionary and stick around for long enough to see their vision through.

How are you handling Matt’s transition to a vice president of IR role?

Well, the good news is I’m not leaving the company. I’ll be around to help Matt as much as he needs me. Also, Matt has worked in IR – both within ADP and externally – and is very experienced, so we expect the transition to be as seamless as it can possibly be.

This interview appeared in IR Magazine.

John Renwick, VP of Investor Relations & Corporate Planning at Kellanova (formerly Kellogg) has spent 23 years at the company. He initially joined in 2000 as VP of IR & Competitive Analysis and then held a number of operational roles in – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Toronto, Canada, Queretaro Area, Mexico before returning to Battle Creek, MI and reprising and expanding his role as VP of IR & Corporate Planning in 2016.

Asked how he got his initial role at Kellogg, John was a sell-side analyst at Morgan Stanley, covering packaged food stocks. He was roadshowing Kellogg’s C-suite around Europe when, at the end of the trip, the CFO said “I have a crazy idea” and asked him if he wanted to become Kellogg’s IRO. John was taken by surprise, initially saying “I’m a New Yorker, my wife’s a Jersey girl, and we barely knew where Michigan was!” However, intrigued to see what life was like “on the inside” of a food company, he took the role, thinking he’d be back on Wall Street in two years. Continue reading →