A TEAM of Ateneans advanced to the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute Research Challenge (IRC) on April 17 held at the Loews Atlanta Hotel in Georgia, United States.

The CFA IRC is a global competition that provides university students with hands-on mentoring and training in financial analysis.

The Philippine team consisted of alumni Sarah Cua (BS ME ‘15), Enrique Fausto (BS ME ‘15), Shaun Que (BS ME and AB EC-H ‘15), Kyle Velasco (BSM AMF ‘15) and applied mathematical finance and economics-honors supersenior Jayhan Regner.

Finance and Accounting Department Lecturer Roberto Bayot and Manulife Senior Assistant Vice President Mark Canizares served as the team’s mentors.

In an interview with The GUIDON, Que said that the participating teams acted as stockbrokers who were expected to analyze a company and to recommend whether to buy, sell or hold the company’s stocks based on a target price.

This year, the CFA Institute chose Sovran Self Storage Inc. as the subject company for the competition.

According to their official website, Sovran Self Storage Inc, is a “is a fully integrated, self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust (REIT) that acquires and manages self-storage properties.”

Que explained that the process entailed “understanding the company background, strategy, industry, risks and forecasting how the stock will perform in the future to come up with our calculated target price.”

The scoring was solely based on the presentation given by the team. The scoring sheet included the criteria for the teams’ arguments, questions, financial valuation and other analyses, team involvement, poise and materials.

The team represented the Philippines and the Asia Pacific region and competed against three other teams coming from two different regions: Canisius College and the University of Florida from the Americas region and Kyviv National Economic University from the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

The Americas regional champion and global final winner of the CFA IRC competition was Canisius College, hailing from Buffalo, New York.

Getting to the finals

Before participating in the CFA IRC, the team representatives had varying reasons on why they joined the competition.

Cua and Regner both agreed that they joined on “impulse.” Fausto and Velasco attributed joining the CFA IRC because of their interest in finance, while Que said that it was curiosity that motivated him.

During the application, Que said that there was an internal selection process held in the Ateneo wherein teams had to produce a 10-page written report for the eliminations.

The teams who passed the eliminations were then required to produce a 10-minute presentation and 10-minute question and answer portion with a panel of judges in order to advance to the national leg.

The team won the national leg held at the Tekite Towers, Ortigas Center on January 23, where they competed against teams from De La Salle University-Dasmariñas, University of the Philippines and University of Santo Tomas.

Que said that it was a “milestone” for the Ateneo because in the seven year history of the competition, the Ateneo had only advanced to the Asia Pacific regionals back in 2013.

The team then proceeded to bag first place in the Asia-Pacific regionals held at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza on March 12, in which they competed against 21 other countries coming from the same region.

Que said that their preparations up until the Asia Pacific Regionals were a “test of commitment” for his team because they had to balance their extra-curricular activities, thesis work and time with their families and friends.

“We definitely did not expect to make it this far. We were initially at shock especially during the Asia Pacific regionals that it took us a while to actually believe that [we were] moving on to the global finals,” shared Que.

Competing in the final leg

Whilst preparing for the global finals, Que recalled that the team prepared tirelessly every day, running through their 10-minute presentation repeatedly.

“We also would think of every possible question that the judges could throw at us that we have pages and pages worth of possible questions with every angle we could think of to ask about our report,” added Que.

Velasco also said that the team was pressured with the fact that they were representing both the Philippines and the Asia Pacific region in the CFA IRC global finals.

“The Philippines has been consistently one of the top contenders in the competition…all eyes were on us, and we could [not] afford to commit any mistakes,” he said.

The University of the Philippines won the global finals in 2013.

Velasco said that the other teams were extremely tough to compete with considering that they were the top contenders in their region.

Despite not having secured the top spot, Velasco said the team felt that “the journey itself to reach the finals is already winning.”

Que added that the team felt “happy and fulfilled” as it was their biggest commitment during their entire college life.