The CFA Institute Investment Research Challenge teams today met with the CFO of The Marcus Corporation.
Students from the following schools, who are participating in the CFA Society of Madison Research Challenge, met at the Hilton Milwaukee City Center:
- Carroll University
- Marquette University
- Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE)
- UW-La Crosse
- UW-Milwaukee
The students from these teams had an opportunity to receive an investor presentation from Douglas A. Neis, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of the Marcus Corporation.
Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Marcus Corporation is a leader in the lodging and entertainment industries, with significant company-owned real estate assets. The Marcus Corporation's movie theatre division, Marcus Theatres, currently owns or manages 684 screens at 55 locations in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and Ohio. The company's lodging division, Marcus Hotels & Resorts, owns or manages 18 hotels, resorts and other properties in nine states. For more information, visit the company's Web site at: http://www.marcuscorp.com.
The CFA Institute Research Challenge offers students the unique opportunity to learn from leading industry experts and compete with peers from the world’s top finance programs. This annual educational initiative promotes best practices in equity research among the next generation of analysts through hands-on mentoring and intensive training in company analysis and presentation skills.
The CFA Research Challenge is different from a “stock-picking” competition. Students conduct in-depth analysis on a single company and produce a full equity research report. The winning team is chosen based on the thoroughness of its analysis and knowledge of one company rather than whether their predictions of the stock price are correct.
Each team works directly with a publicly traded company (i.e. Marcus Corporation) while preparing their research. This involvement included today’s company management presentation to the teams and the Q&A session that followed Neis’ talk.
Each team is paired with an investment professional who mentors the team throughout the research process and reviews and critiques the report. The teams are responsible for writing a professional quality research report. Each team produces an initiation of coverage report on its chosen company and the report is reviewed and scored by a group of judges.
Each team has an opportunity to present their research to a panel of experts from top financial institutions. The team with the highest combined report and presentation score is the winner. Year after year, the students participating in the Challenge indicate that the research presentation to the panel of industry experts is one of the most important parts of the project.
The winners of the local Challenges advance to compete against teams from within their geographic region, culminating in a global finale. One of the teams will have the opportunity of advancing to the Regional and Global Finals (held in New York City).
