CFO THOUGHT LEADER 704: When Investors Come to Mind | Puneet Pamnani, CFO, KORE Wireless
When asked about a personal habit that has served him well over the years, finance leader Puneet Pamnani raises his voice slightly and seeks to mimic the delivery of his wife’s tone: “This is what you do for a hobby? You read company annual reports?”
To which Pamnani defends his favorite pastime with the retort: “I find them interesting!”
Although it might seem difficult to imagine this exchange taking place on sandy beach vacations and holiday escapes, it nonetheless remains an example that Pamnani uses to illustrate his relentless curiosity for how businesses operate and perform.
According to Pamnani, this curiosity has led him to regularly attend the annual shareholder meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, the major event for many value investors and fans of Warren Buffett, among whom Pamnani proudly includes himself. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that Pamnani’s reading pastime is one that Buffett has long enjoyed and encouraged others to pursue.
“I’ve been to every Warren Buffett annual shareholder meeting in the past 10 years,” says Pamnani, who quickly adds: “But not the last one, that was hard”—signaling the environment related to COVID.
Of course, Buffett is renowned not just for the investment and business insights themselves that he serves up but also for how he serves them up using clear, concise language that every investor can understand—and it’s here where Pamnani’s relentless habit and professional life are perhaps about to converge as at no other previous time.
“The CFO arrives at the center of the process when a company goes public,” explains Pamnani, who back in 2018 entered the CFO office at KORE Wireless, a provider of mobility and network connectivity solutions that is expected to go public later this year.
Helping KORE to realize its IPOs ambitions is just latest chapter of a transaction-driven career in which at times Pamnani has worn multiple hats, including those of CFO, COO, and chief strategy officer.
“As a privately equity–backed firm, KORE has been very commercially focused, but it’s now time to balance that out, and as we maintain our focus on revenue and profits, we need to be more focused on compliance in order to become one of the best publicly listed companies of our size,” observes the increasingly investor-minded Pamnani, who tells us that he keeps a volume of Warren Buffett’s letters to shareholders on a shelf nearby.
“These are his actual letters, word for word, compiled as a book. You also can also find a summary on Amazon—but this is not a plug,” remarks Pamnani, who, perhaps like Buffett, just wants to share his methods. –Jack Sweeney
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