Pitching to Harvard; Landing at 2nd

Saturday, November 11, 2017

By: Carrie Gilmour

Soon to be SAF graduates travelled to Cambridge Massachusetts last week for their last stock pitch competition before embarking on their professional careers.

Talha Siddiqui, 4B AFM, Raj Patel, 4B AFM, Thinisha Gunasekera, 4B AFM and Uday Sandhu, 4A AFM
Talha Siddiqui, 4B AFM, Raj Patel, 4B AFM, Thinisha Gunasekera, 4B AFM and Uday Sandhu, 4A AFM, prepared for the Harvard Stock Pitch Competition at the prestigious university to pitch, Carriage Services, a Funeral Home company based in Houston, Texas to a panel of judges with their recommendations to buy or sell the stock.

With 60 audience members, SAF and the University of Florida went head-to-head after beating out 45 qualifying teams to advance to the finals. SAF brought home second place.

Talha spoke on behalf of the team. “We prepared for the competition by spending a great deal of time understanding the company which involved reading pretty much every filing, transcript and report we could find. We started our work in September since we had to submit a written report on the first week of October. After qualifying for the second [round], we continuously worked on the pitch throughout October to November.”

The team have worked together on a number of projects prior to this competition, including the Student Investment Fund. The hands-on experience in equity valuation and portfolio management each team member gained help to build a sold collaborative foundation for this competition.

“The four of us have worked together on other school projects/competitions so we were familiar with each others' strengths and weaknesses. We leveraged the skills that everyone brought to the table and that really helped us put together a comprehensive stock pitch.”

Congratulations on bringing home 2nd place!