Haas MBAs Win Silver for "No Buy" Pitch

By Haas School of Business

By Tom Garland, MBA 15

Ivey Stock Pitch Serious business: Ryan Stanley, Tom Garland, and Zane Keller, MBA 15, make their pitch

 The Win: 2nd place at Ivey Business School's Ben Graham Centre for Value Investing 2015 Stock Picking Competition in Toronto last month

The Team: Tom Garland, Zane Keller, and Ryan Stanley, all FTMBA 15

The Field: Teams from 25 business schools internationally, with three invited to the final in Toronto.

The Pitch: With all three finalists given the same stock to evaluate, we were tasked with pitching a "buy" or "no buy" and explaining our rationale. Our conclusion was a "no buy" for the stock—Buehler Inc—on the basis of three key value factors:

  1. The company's free cash flow has been negative since 1994, owing to poor sales and a highly capital-intensive industry
  2. Significant declines in ROIC
  3. Opaque ownership and incentive structure
The Clincher: Our feedback highlighted that we were one of the few teams to genuinely grasp the ideology of value investing. Aided by Zane's years of experience in the field, our models were tight and our evaluation comprehensive. We also received numerous complements on our presentation style, for which we are indebted to the experience of delivering such a significant number of presentations during our two years at Haas.
Posted on May 13, 2015