Competing for the first time in the school’s history, Harding’s Chartered Financial Analyst Investment Team won first place at the regional CFA Institutional Research Challenge meet on Feb. 11 in Memphis, Tenn., beating teams from schools such as Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, the University of Arkansas and Henderson State University.
Harding’s team, composed of senior finance and accounting double majors Austin Augsburger, Ben Beggs and Steven Terry, will advance to the Americas competition on April 10 in New York City, where they will represent Arkansas, Texas, west Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana and will face teams from regions in both North and South America. If Harding wins at the Americas meet, it will proceed to the global competition on April 11.
“This is a big-time competition, and I’m real proud of the students,” said Assistant Professor of Business Administration Ken Moran, who coached the team along with Assistant Professor of Business Administration Ellis Sloan. “They are very bright, very intelligent. They have spent an unbelievable amount of time and energy in writing and rewriting [their project].”
For the challenge, the teams in Harding’s region were all assigned to research the company Polaris Industries, which produces off-road vehicles, motorcycles, snowmobiles, low-emission vehicles and defense vehicles. The teams’ objective was to evaluate Polaris and determine if its stock was over- or underpriced. The teams determined the value of the company’s stock and recommended whether investors should buy, sell or hold stock in Polaris. Each team had to write a report, deliver a 10-minute presentation and answer questions from judges about their Polaris findings.
The Harding team compiled a report based on Polaris’ financial records in which it recommended that investors in Polaris hold their stocks, valuing the company’s stock at $63 a share even though the stock was trading at $68 at the time of the competition. Other teams at the competition set Polaris’ stock value in the $70-range and recommended that investors buy stock in Polaris, saying the company had room to grow, Moran said. But Terry, Augsburger and Beggs defended their $63 price target, and the judges — all chartered financial analysts — agreed with their evaluation.
“We knew our stuff,” Beggs said. “It was a lot of work, … but we enjoyed it, especially now that we get to go to New York.”
The finance team will continue to present its research on Polaris at the Americas competition rather than researching a new company. Although all of the teams in Harding’s region were assigned to research Polaris, each other region was assigned a different company to evaluate for the CFA challenge.
Since this was the team’s first year to compete, the members did not know what to expect at the regional meet, Beggs and Augsburger said. According to Moran, they learned from their opponents’ presentations and are going to enhance their PowerPoint with more color and visual aids for the Americas competition. He said he is confident in his team.
“I think they stand a very good chance [in New York],” Moran said. “I really do.”
