📰 Spotlight on Allison Gatlin, Tech Reporter, Investor’s Business Daily

Background

-Name: Allison Gatlin

-Home Base: Outside Sacramento, CA

-Role: Allison is the sole health tech reporter for Investor’s Business Daily (IBD), focusing on biotech, pharmaceuticals, and medtech. She covers the intersection of life sciences and the stock market, emphasizing publicly traded companies.

-Expertise: Allison’s background in tech reporting, combined with her experience in public safety and county reporting, informs her ability to distill complex topics into clear, investor-friendly narratives.

Beat Overview

-Publication: As of 2021, IBD is part of the News Corp and Dow Jones group of companies. IBD offers comprehensive coverage of the financial markets, with a mission “to help our customers make more money in the stock market” as a “fintech innovator.” Initial publication of Allison’s bylined articles is on investors.com, and her stories are often picked up by other sites like Yahoo or Google News. IBD also distributes newsletters and videos in which she’ll sometimes be featured. She notes that, although the IBD Live broadcast may capture life science news, she does not go on air to report on it herself.

-Coverage Areas: Allison’s focus is on US-based publicly traded biotech, pharma, and medtech companies listed on NYSE and NASDAQ and that trade above $10 per share. She typically doesn’t cover penny or dollar stocks unless they’re “rivaling some of the bigger companies or are part of a feature story focusing on trends in a specific space.” She says that, “if a smaller company has news and it’s not impacting a bigger company, then, it might not be something that I would cover.”

-Angles of Interest: Allison writes up to six stories per day, but it depends on what’s happening in the news. She commonly reports on financial news, M&A, preclinical and clinical data, earnings releases, and FDA approvals. She also follows preclinical data readouts especially when it will move stocks (e.g. companies like Intellia).

What to Watch

-Emerging Trends: Keep an eye out for Allison’s coverage of hot sectors like metabolic health, cholesterol treatments, robotic surgery, and the evolving field of radiopharmaceuticals. “Something might be hot one day, and then just kind of fall off the radar, and then back,” she says (e.g. areas like NASH, now known as MASH).

-Feature Stories: In addition to her daily reporting responsibilities, Allison works on longer-term feature stories that explore industry trends and significant technological advancements. “I’m usually working on one or two feature stories that I’m just interviewing people for, gathering data for, over a course of weeks to months (very rarely months). But sometimes, I do have a little bit more headway, so I’m working on some of those longer-term stories while keeping tabs on the daily stuff,” she shares.

Pitching Tips

-Ideal Pitch: “My ideal pitch is in a space that I that I follow, that’s interesting to investors right now. It is tied to maybe a news hook at the moment.” For example, a pitch that says, “‘This news just came out. So, would you [Allison] like commentary from this person, this company that’s an expert, or is affected by this news?’ That will almost always grab my attention.”

-Embargoed News: Allison appreciates receiving news under embargo – the earlier the better – as it allows her time for thorough research, though she reminds us that not all embargoed news will be covered.

-Source Preferences: She’s especially interested in speaking with doctors, KOLs, and sometimes patients for richer storytelling. CEO interviews also are highly valued for insights into company operations and market movements. “I really like CEO interviews. Sometimes, I’m not familiar with a company… and it’s great to just touch base with a CEO or CFO to give me an update on the company.” Allison says that while she doesn’t always have time, especially during earnings season, she tries to prioritize those conversations if an executive’s company pertains to “a stock that has news or is expected to have news.”

-Reporting Resources: Allison rarely listens to earnings calls live but reviews transcripts. Providing key information not easily found in transcripts and analyst reports can be crucial. She also advises that proactively sending images to her is not helpful; she’ll ask you directly if she needs photos.

Pet Peeves

-Inappropriate Pitches: Allison is often spread thin, so receiving pitches about irrelevant stocks or those outside her coverage scope is a common frustration. As an example, she shares, “If it’s a smaller company, or it’s in a space that’s not getting a lot of investor attention right now, then, it’s not going to be one that I’ll really have time for.”

-Last-Minute Embargoes: Receiving embargoed information within a few hours of the release time is particularly problematic, as it does not allow adequate time for proper analysis and reporting.

-Excessive Follow-Ups: A single reminder is sufficient. Avoid multiple emails that are “bringing this to the top of your inbox.” Allison adds, “It’s not helpful for me because at that point, I’ve seen the email at least twice, and if I’m interested, then I’ll respond, and if I’m not, then I just probably won’t respond. I don’t really have time to respond to every pitch I get.”

–Spaghetti Subject Lines: Though Allison recommends including company names and keywords in subject lines, she says that “not giving me a whole lot of [other] information is really just going to make me think that they’re kind of mass spreading their pitches out there, throwing as much spaghetti at the wall as they can and hoping something sticks.” Instead, strive for targeted, subject lines, signaling to her that you did “some research beforehand and made sure I was the right person to get the pitch.”

Events and Conferences

-Currently does not attend conferences in person but may cover key events remotely.

Key Quote

“I cover news that tends to move a stock, and that’s hard to predict.”

Lightning Round

-Favorite Kind of Sources: People who aren’t scripted.

-Most Memorable Interview: A retired NFL player investing in a biotech company.

-Most Boring Types of Pitches: Fundraising announcements.

-Common Misconception About Your Beat: That I cover stocks trading <$10 a share.

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