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Yet Another Value Podcast · · 29 分钟

如何赢下股票推介赛|一位 Ira Sohn 冠军的经验

Andrew Walker

YouTube
TL;DR
  • Andrew Walker 的核心重构是:股票推介赛既是在推销股票,也是在推销自己——「一切都是销售」,而一场出色的推介就是「一张彩票,但彩票是免费买的」。 下行只是花几小时准备;上行则包括奖金、声誉和长尾效应——他至今还会收到关于自己2018年 Ira Sohn 获胜推介的邮件(「我很喜欢你的推介」),而 CSL 团队上播客后,有15人发邮件表示想聘用他们。同样的能力也能迁移到募集一只 SPV,或者当你管理着5亿美元时,向一个大型新客户做推介。
  • 第一条规则是元层面的、而非基本面层面的:你决定参赛的那一刻,游戏就已经开始;在做研究前,先搞清楚比赛规则,尤其是评委是谁。 题目要求3-6个月兑现的推介,与5年期限的推介完全不同;Buffett/Ackman 风格的评委想要有护城河的复利增长型公司,事件驱动基金的评委想看重组和分拆,pod shop 的评委则想听「市场共识是每股收益20美分,我认为是40美分,公司会大幅超预期并上调指引」。CSL 团队明确根据 Pershing Square Challenge 的框架和评委构成反向设计投资想法。
  • 最好的推介要回答「你看到了什么、而市场没看到什么?」 并且拿出只有你能带来的独特洞见。「这只股票现在是10倍,历史上是20倍」是「糟糕透顶的推介」——「一个拿着 Bloomberg 的实习生都能告诉你」。理想情况是由肿瘤科医生推介一只癌症股票:「市场给这款药有效的概率定价为30%,但基于我对证据的复核,我认为有效概率是80%」——这会是一场令人难以置信的推介,但前提是「我们不是要因为股票推介坐牢」。他在 Ira Sohn 获胜的 La Quinta 推介中找到了2个独特角度:其一,这是独一无二的 C-corp 转 REIT 交易,La Quinta 将品牌出售给 Wyndham,并把自有酒店剥离成立一家新 REIT;这家 REIT 没有分红历史,税务结构和股东基础也不同,却可以套用以收益率为核心的 REIT 估值框架;其二,滞后财务数据没有计入 Wyndham 的协同效应——随着 Wyndham Rewards 填满客房,入住率将从60%升至70%。
  • 大胆一点:偏乐观情景要直接当作基准情景,因为「一个故事带着更多一点上行空间,效果会更好」。 100美元的股票给出115美元目标价,读起来只是「一般想法」;「我的基准情景是上行75%——这才有得聊」。他的类比是,分时度假销售员不会对下雨和30年锁定期遮遮掩掩——但仍要让目标价站得住脚,因为3000美元的目标意味着「别人会给你打折扣,也不会相信你说的任何话」。
  • 即使实地工作并未带来投资信息,扎实的跑腿调研本身也能成为卖点:「如果你能把自己戴着安全帽的照片放到幻灯片上,那就说明你做足了功课」——尽管实地走访「通常并不太有利于投资」。 5通客户电话都说「我们正在把采购金额转向这家公司的产品」,说服力可能胜过任何从财报中推导出的结论;学生可以免费打这些电话,而一名「40岁的研究分析师」往往得通过专家网络才能做到。DoorDash 团队提到约40通专家访谈电话——「对一个股票想法来说可能过度了」,但对股票推介很有用。
  • 3个陷阱分别是:模型做过头、被风险淹没,以及背景介绍过量导致全盘失焦。 在模型上花超过15秒就是「只有下行、没有上行」——评委一旦发现错误或质疑某个假设,就会被拉出故事;说一句「目标价150,由 DCF 支持,假设放在附录」,然后继续往下讲。风险只需要一页(「McDonald's、GLP-1——我们考虑过了,不认为这是风险」),除非情况确实是二元结果,比如1990年代的烟草诉讼;那种情况下,二元结果本身就是推介核心。
  • 格式规范是基本门槛,却带来不对称回报:只要一个错字或一页前后不一致,「评委就会被拉出故事,可信度随之下降」。 一场出色的推介配上粗糙的 deck,「很可能输给一场观点一般但 deck 干净利落的推介」——MD 圈出两处对不上的数字这一幕,同样适用于股票推介 deck。
摘要 · 为研究而整理的核心内容

1. 为什么做单人节目,以及为什么推介是一张免费彩票

  • 节目的契机是开学季:Walker 被准备股票推介赛的大学生和 MBA 学生的咨询邮件淹没,于是把自己「反反复复」讲过的建议录了下来。他先半自嘲、半认真地摆出资历:播客上做过约400个股票推介,评判过大量股票推介,赢下2018年 Ira Sohn 比赛(「大概是最负盛名的股票推介赛」),基本赢遍所有线上赛事,还主持过过去3届 Pershing Square Challenge 冠军团队的节目。
  • 20岁时他一定不会接受、但后来才明白的人生经验是:「年纪越大,越会意识到一切都是销售。」无论是参加比赛、面试、围绕一个想法募集 SPV,还是在投资人电话结尾问一句「你最近在看什么想法?」——股票推介都是「这个圈子的通行货币」。
  • 值得下注的关键在于不对称性:「做股票推介,就是在买一张彩票,但彩票是免费买的。」除了几小时准备时间,几乎没有下行;上行不仅是奖金,还有持续很久的尾部收益——上个月还有人因为他2018年的推介给他发邮件,而 CSL 团队上播客后,「大概有15个人给我发邮件……说‘我现在就会聘用他们’」。

2. 先搞清楚游戏,再研究股票

  • 最重要的事情——「比任何研究、任何故事都重要」——是先搞清楚自己在玩什么游戏。如果比赛要的是3-6个月内兑现的想法,就要围绕这个期限设计;5年期限的推介「完全是另一回事」,哪怕同一只股票可能同时适用。
  • 接下来要研究评委画像,因为评委通常会提前公布。Buffett/Ackman 型评委要的是「有护城河、大规模再投资、能持续复利的公司」;5名事件驱动基金经理则会期待「古怪但有催化剂的事件型机会」;pod shop 则看季度业绩和市场共识——「市场共识是收入增长5%、EPS为20美分;我认为收入增长15%、EPS为40美分。公司会大幅超预期并上调指引」。
  • CSL 团队就是一个验证案例:他们在动手研究前告诉 Walker,自己「特意在寻找符合比赛框架和评委投资风格的想法」——「我觉得这太聪明了」。

3. 讲好一个故事:独特优势,强势表达

  • Walker 在播客开场时通常会问:「市场竞争很激烈——你看到了什么、而市场没看到什么?」根据卖方目标价做套利、押注估值倍数回归均值,是「我听过最糟糕的推介」。理想情况是由肿瘤科医生推介一只癌症股票:「市场给这款药有效的概率定价为30%,但基于我对证据的复核,我认为有效概率是80%」——这会是一场不可思议的推介,但要记住,「我们不是要因为股票推介坐牢」。
  • 他在 Ira Sohn 获胜的 La Quinta 推介,就是这套方法的样板:La Quinta 将品牌出售给 Wyndham,同时把自有酒店剥离成立一家新 REIT。这是一笔罕见的 C-corp 转 REIT 交易,涉及不同的税务结构、公司类型和股东基础;而多数 REIT 都按股息收益率估值,这家 REIT 却没有分红历史。更被市场低估的是,历史财务数据反映的仍是独立运营的 La Quinta,但交易完成后,REIT 将获得 Wyndham 的协同效应——通过 Wyndham Rewards,入住率将从60%升至70%,客户获取成本也会下降,「但没有人把这些因素计入估值」。
  • 关于大胆程度,本期最锋利的区分是:「伟大的投资人会做风险对冲……伟大的推介不会这样做。」把偏乐观情景直接当作基准情景;评委看到上行+15-20%时,会觉得「想法一般」,看到「上行+75%——这才有得聊」。但目标必须合理、必须有事实支撑;如果目标价离谱,「他们就不会相信你说的任何话」。分时度假销售员的类比很直接:他们不会提下雨、30年合约,或75岁时还要坐飞机过去——「这里会是你的热带小天堂」。

4. 即使不能提供信息,跑腿调研也能卖

  • 这有意反转了做空者的格言:「如果你看到 CEO 戴着安全帽,那就做空。」对股票推介而言,安全帽照片反而是可信度证明。Walker 也坦承,实地走访通常并不太有利于真正的投资——「公司可以用某种方式展示,让任何东西看起来都很好」——但对一场推介来说,它能证明你确实做了功课。
  • 围绕市场份额提升的论证,可以按说服力逐级升级:「增长10%,竞争对手增长8%」是任何人都能知道的信息;「我打了5个业内人士的电话」已经有点锋利;「我打了5个客户的电话,他们说‘我们正在把采购金额转向这家公司的产品’」才是独特信息,只要不涉及 MNPI,就属于合法调研,而且不会出现在 SEC 文件里。学生有结构性优势:人们「总想帮大学生一把,也愿意免费聊聊」,而40岁的分析师往往只能被转给专家网络。
  • DoorDash 团队做了约40通专家访谈电话,这「对一个股票想法或一项投资来说可能过度了,但对股票推介来说……你是在告诉评委:‘你们可以相信我。’」同样的逻辑也适用于 SPV 尽调材料——「人们就是会更安心」。

5. 3个陷阱,加上基本的格式要求

  • 模型做过头:Walker 见过10页的 deck,其中5页都是 Excel。模型部分一旦超过15秒,「你就是在自我毁灭」——数字很无聊;与推介本身不同,模型时间是「只有下行、没有上行」:评委发现一个错误,或质疑一个假设,就会「把他们从故事里拉出来」。一行话就够了:「目标价150,由 DCF 支持,假设放在附录。」然后继续——「猜猜怎么着?没人会问。」
  • 被风险淹没:用一页承认风险,然后继续往下讲——「McDonald's、GLP-1 是风险。我们考虑过了。我们不认为这是风险。」以 Facebook 为例,可以承认他认为在内华达州及其他地区提起的青少年成瘾诉讼,然后说:「我们认为已经计入股价,市场共识是对的。」接着往下走。例外是确实存在二元结果的情况,比如1990年代的烟草诉讼,或持续经营警告;这时必须正面回应,但「推介核心就是这个二元结果」。这类推介专业性强、风险也高,适合某些评委阵容,不适合另一些。
  • 背景介绍过量同样会拖垮推介:不要让20年的公司历史占掉10页中的3页——「10-K 里就有背景介绍,评委可以自己去读」。也正因为如此,简单、知名的公司比专业化的化工企业更容易推介。
  • 格式错误的影响是不对称的:就像 MD 圈出2个加不起来的数字,一个错字或前后不一致的页面,就意味着「他们无法相信你其余的工作」。Walker 还自嘲地披露,这整套 deck 是 AI 做的——「别学我」。最后他的建议是:有用的就拿走,其他的忽略;「如果我说的一切都毫无道理,那就反着我做……争取赢下来。」
完整逐字稿
Andrew Walker

Today I’m happy to have on myself for a special episode. This is a special episode, and I’ll get there in one second. Normally on this podcast, I have another guest on, and you can listen or watch because the only visual is me and the guest talking. I am a very handsome man, so you might want to see me talking.

But because it’s just me today, I am going to share a brief slide deck that I made as a crutch to help me tell the story. If you want to watch the video, you can, but I am going to try to do this in a way that anyone listening to the audio will get everything.

With that out of the way, let’s go to today’s pitch. Not a pitch—but actually, it is a pitch. Today’s presentation is “How to Win a Stock Pitch Competition.”

The reason I wanted to do this is that it’s Monday, August 24, school is starting up again, and every school year I get contacted by a bunch of college and MBA students who are doing a stock pitch competition and want help with their stock pitch.

I was recently contacted by one, and I try to help anyone who reaches out to me with basically anything. I was swapping notes with this person and said, “You know what? I do this so often, and I’ve been meaning to make a video on how to win a stock pitch competition.”

So I thought I’d go ahead and do it now, while school is about to get back in session. For the students who find this, hopefully it’s helpful for them.

The secondary reason is that I had a podcast scheduled for today and it got canceled. I had this on my mind, I had a free block of an hour, and I thought, “All right, let’s do this.”

Oh, by the way, AI made this whole deck, so if you see something that’s crazy in here, you can just say, “AI, not Andrew,” because AI obviously made the whole deck. I just told it what I wanted. So that’s the overview for today.

Before we dive into the stock pitch competition and pitches and everything, let me give one disclaimer. It’s the same disclaimer I always give, but now you get to see it in video form: Nothing on this podcast is investment advice. It is advice on how to win a stock pitch competition, but I don’t think that’s the same thing. Nothing is investment advice. You can see the full disclaimer on the website, in the show notes, or wherever you want to, including at the end of this podcast.

Second, a word from our sponsors, Trada. Trada is two buy-siders swapping thoughts on a stock that they are involved in. The way to go see it is trada.com, T-R-A-T-A.com. I absolutely love it. Everyone who's reached out from this podcast has told me they love it. And you know, if you're doing a stock pitch competition, I think Trada would be really helpful if you go on there and say, “Hey, I’m thinking about pitching company XYZ, find me someone to talk to about it.” They’ll find you someone, and you can swap thoughts with them, and I think that would be a really helpful way to prep for a stock pitch competition. Prep for the questions you’re going to get. Prep, you know, maybe hear some other sides, hear some other angles you can pull on the stock pitch competition.

All right, all that out of the way, let’s dive into the stock pitch competition. Why am I doing this? I mentioned up front that the real reason is that school is about to start back up, and I’ve found that most stock pitch competitions are designed for college and MBA students. I get contacted all the time, and I wanted something that would be helpful for them.

Here’s the funny thing about life: When I was 20, if you had said, “Hey, Andrew, do you want a sales job?” I would have said, “F no. I don’t want to sell. I hate selling things.”

Now I’m getting a lot of gray hairs. College was 20 years ago for me, and I’m pushing 40. As you get older, you realize everything is selling.

It might not be selling in the sense of, “Hey, I’m selling timeshares,” or “I’m selling life insurance,” or whatever. Those are completely fine jobs, by the way. It might not be that, but you’re always selling yourself. A stock pitch competition is selling yourself.

The way you win a stock pitch competition—again, they’re designed for college students and MBA students, for the most part, people early in their careers—but guess what? What’s the difference between pitching something in a stock pitch competition as an MBA student or a first- or second-year investor and pitching something when you’re running $250 million and raising an SPV to invest in one idea?

You’re about to have to do a stock pitch to everybody you want to invest in that SPV. If you’re running $500 million and pitching to a big new client, guess what? If you’re a fundamental investor, you’re about to do a stock pitch for that client.

While this is ostensibly designed—and it’s really going to focus on the stock pitch of a contest—for an investor, you are always selling yourself. A lot of the things I’m going to talk about here are broadly applicable to all of those situations.

If you’re an investor, you’re always selling. You’re always pitching stocks, whether it’s for a competition, for a job, for an SPV, or just to other investors.

When you talk to other investors, I end the call by asking, “Hey, what ideas are you looking at that I should be looking at?” You don’t have to give a full stock pitch, but the investors you want to talk to more are the thoughtful ones. When you ask that question, they give a thoughtful response or an interesting idea. Stock pitches are the currency of the realm.

So that is why I’m doing this. Let me get to this. You might say, “Hey, Andrew, who are you to talk about stock pitches?”

I run Yet Another Value Podcast, and I’ve had about 400 stock pitches done on the podcast. I’ve judged, quote-unquote, a lot of stock pitches, but I’ve also—I don’t know if I say this with a lot of ego or no ego at all, a lot of humility or no humility at all—won a lot of stock pitches, too.

If you’re watching the video, I won Ira Sohn in 2018, and I think that’s probably the most prestigious stock pitch competition there is. I’ve won that. Online, there are lots of different sites that have stock pitch competitions, and I’ve pretty much won all of them at some point.

I haven’t just judged, quote-unquote, a lot of stock pitches from the podcast. I’ve won a lot of these things, too. When I won them, I used a lot of the things I’m going to talk to you about here. Hopefully, I do have some street cred in terms of having won these things before.

If you’re watching, you can see the clip of me on CNBC talking about winning Ira Sohn. I look at that and say, “My hairline is different now. I think I’ve hopefully lost a little bit of weight. I think my face is a little firmer.”

Oh my God, I’m such a narcissist. But neither here nor there, I do have a track record of winning these things, so I think this comes from a good place.

Another thing you can say is that I’ve hosted the past 3 winners of the Pershing Square Challenge on the podcast. I think the Pershing Square Challenge is probably, again, the most prestigious MBA competition for stock pitches.

Not that I had anything to do with these people winning—I did not. They’re just awesome, and they all won on their own. But I have had them on the podcast and talked to them about how they did their pitches. I think I’m coming from a pretty good place of, “Hey, I know kind of what it takes to win a stock pitch competition.”

All right, I’ll try to put my narcissism out of the way. Again, I tried not to say that with a lot of ego, but maybe it was with a lot of ego.

Let’s talk about why you should care about winning these. We hit on this a little bit, but you’re always selling yourself. If you win a stock pitch competition or give a great stock pitch for an SPV, you’re buying a lottery ticket, but you’re buying it for free.

What’s the downside if you give a great stock pitch and don’t win or don’t get the SPV? There’s literally no downside, except that you put a couple of hours into a great stock pitch. The upside is unlimited.

Somebody could invest a huge amount of money into your SPV. You could win one of these stock pitch competitions. Often, there’s a significant amount of money associated with winning a stock pitch competition. There’s also a lot of reputation.

I’ll point to the CSL team that won the Pershing Square Challenge about 18 months ago. They came on the podcast, and I got about 15 people who emailed me saying, “These guys were unbelievable. I would hire them right now if they were looking for a job.”

Fortunately for them, I believe they all had internships. But you never know when someone being a big fan of yours because you did a great stock pitch will pay off down the line.

For me, I was in it in 2018. 2018 is a really long time ago; sometimes I forget it even happened. But I had somebody email me last month and say, “Hey, I loved your pitch at the competition 8 years ago.” So it’s just a long tail.

You do a great stock pitch, and there’s absolutely no downside and unlimited upside, whether it’s winning now and getting money or recognition instantly, or you just do a great stock pitch and, a year down the line, 2 years, 10 years, whatever it is, somebody comes up and says, “Hey, I thought that was awesome. I’d love to talk to you about something else.” That’s what it gets you.

Let’s talk about planning to win a stock pitch. Here’s the game plan, and again, I may freestyle all this. First, you have to remember that with a stock pitch, you’re playing a game, and you have to remember to play within the rules of the game. We’ll talk about that, then we’re going to talk about the story and framing the story for the stock pitch, and finally, we’re going to talk about the traps that you can fall into when you’re doing a stock pitch.

So let’s start by talking about the game. The game starts the moment you decide to enter a stock pitch competition. The most important thing—more important than any of the research, any of the story, or anything you put together—is actually knowing what type of game you’re playing. A big part of that is knowing the judges.

If you enter a stock pitch competition, you want to design a pitch that can win that competition, and there are 2 things that are critical to that. Number 1, if you enter a stock pitch competition and they explicitly say, “We want stocks that are going to work on a 3-to-6-month time frame,” then you better design your pitch around a 3-to-6-month time frame. If they want stocks that are going to work on a 5-year time frame, you better design a pitch that works on a 5-year time frame.

Those are very, very different things, right? Know what type of pitch you’re doing. If you’re doing a best idea of the year pitch competition, you better have something that you think can work in the next year, and you should explain the reasons why it’s going to work in this specific year. Again, that can be very different from something that’s going to work this quarter or something that’s going to work over the next 5 years. That doesn’t mean something that works this year won’t do great over 5 years, but you want to focus on what’s going to work this year if the pitch is a this-year stock pitch.

The second thing is that you want to know your judges. You should look them up. Most stock pitches make their judges known ahead of time. If all of your judges are Warren Buffett, Bill Ackman, and one other super-concentrated value investor, you’re probably going to want to pitch a stock that would go into a super-concentrated portfolio. You’re going to want to pitch something that’s got a moat, has a big reinvestment opportunity, and is a compounder-type stock, right?

That’s what fits their book and their way of thinking, so you should pitch something that fits their way of thinking. In contrast, if you go into a stock pitch competition and they’ve got 5 guys up there who run event-driven funds, and all of their investments are in restructurings, mergers, spin-offs, and quirky events, you should probably lean into a quirky event situation.

If you go and do a stock pitch and all the people are at pod shops, pod shops are very broad. But for the most part, especially if you’ve got a lot of analysts on there, a lot of the pod-shop people are focused on quarters, consensus numbers, and where consensus numbers might be right or wrong.

If you’re going to pitch to a pod shop, or you’re pitching because you’re applying for a job, you should focus on what pod shops like. You should probably say, “The consensus is that this company is going to grow revenue 5%, and EPS is going to be $0.20. I think they’re going to grow revenue by 15%, and EPS is going to be $0.40. They’re going to smash it, raise guidance, and everything’s going to go up.” You should be focused on that.

Design a pitch that works for your contest and your judges. That’s rule number 1. Those are very different things. What would win with judges who have concentrated books might not win with pod-shop judges, so make sure you’re thinking about that.

I’ll refer again to Team CSL. If you go listen to that podcast, one of the things they said was, “We knew we were pitching in the Pershing Square Challenge. When we were trying to find an idea, we were specifically looking for an idea that fit the framework of the challenge and the judges’ investing styles.” I thought that was so brilliant on their end. You’ve really got to be thinking about that when you pitch.

You’ve got your idea and your pitch lined up. What’s rule number 1 of pitching? You’re telling a story. Tell a compelling story, and there are 3 real ways to do that. A, you want to focus on something unique. B, you want to be bold. Don’t hedge yourself. I find great investors hedge and think about the downsides; great pitches do not do that. The third thing you want to do is the legwork. Let’s dive into those.

Focus on something unique. I start every podcast off by saying, “The market is a competitive place. What are you seeing that the market’s missing?” That is the best pitch you can give. If you go up there and pitch, “This stock trades for 100, and the average sell-side target on it is 120,” that is the worst pitch I’ve ever heard.

You’re saying 20%, which anybody would take at 20% a year, but that is a terrible pitch. If you say, “This stock is currently trading for 10 times price-to-earnings, and historically it’s traded for 20 times price-to-earnings, so I think it’s going to double,” that’s an awful pitch. These are things that an intern with a Bloomberg could tell you. You want something that only you know, and the more you can focus on that in the pitch, the better the pitch is going to be.

I’ll give 2 examples. Let’s say that you’re a trained scientist, a doctor, or whatever it is. Pitching a biotech is very difficult because the judges often don’t have the expertise, but if you could go up there and do a pitch that said, “I am an oncologist, and I’m here to pitch this cancer company because the market is pricing in 30% odds that the drug works. Based on my review of the evidence and my training, I think there’s an 80% chance that the drug works,” that is an unbelievable stock pitch.

You want to make sure you don’t have MNPI or something—we’re not trying to go to jail for a stock pitch—but that’s an unbelievable stock pitch. Let me give another example. My winning pitch was La Quinta.

What happened there was that La Quinta, the hotel chain, was a publicly traded company. They were selling the brand to Wyndham and spinning off all of their owned hotels into a new REIT. My pitch was twofold. Number 1, this was an incredibly weird, one-of-a-kind situation. It wasn’t just a merger with a spin-off; it was a merger of a C-corp into a REIT, and REITs are very different.

It’s a different tax structure and a different type of company, there’s a different shareholder base, and most REITs are judged on dividend yield. They were spinning off a REIT with no dividend history, so you were going to have a lot of turmoil.

The second interesting thing—and this is something unique I kept hammering home—was that the trailing financials of this REIT were based on La Quinta as a standalone company. Once they were spun off, La Quinta, the brand, was going to go into Wyndham, and they were going to get all the Wyndham Rewards members, the Wyndham back office, and everything else.

My pitch was that, as they integrated La Quinta with Wyndham, there were going to be synergies between Wyndham buying La Quinta, but the REIT was going to benefit from those synergies. Hotels that were 60% occupied would be 70% occupied as Wyndham Rewards members started filling them up. They were going to be able to acquire customers more easily, and their customer-acquisition costs were going to go down.

They had all these ways that the trailing financials of the REIT being spun off were not meaningless, but were going to be significantly improved once the deal closed, and nobody was factoring that in. So I had 2 really unique angles to that pitch. As you’re hearing it, particularly if you’re an investor and you’ve been investing for a while, you probably heard 4 or 5 things where you said, “That’s something interesting. That’s what I like. That’s a sign that something could be mispriced.”

Lean into something unique. Whether it’s a unique situation or your unique background that lets you pitch something better than anyone else, lean into that. That’s the first thing I would tell you.

The second thing is to be bold and aggressive. You’re not going to get up there and say, “The stock trades for 100, and my price target is 115.” That’s boring. That’s 15% upside. That’s terrible. Not terrible—I mean, 15% upside is fine—but that’s boring. You’re doing a pitch, and you have to sell yourself a little bit, right?

Your price target isn’t 115; your price target is 150. I’m not saying to do something crazy. If the stock is 100 and you say, “My price target is 3,000,” you’d gosh-darn better have really good reasons why it’s 3,000, because if you do something incredulous, people are going to discount you, and they’re not going to trust anything you say.

But you don't want to be hedging yourself, right? Take what would normally be your bullish case—your soft bull case—and make that your base case. Again, you're telling a story, and a story works better when there's a little more upside, when it's a little sexier, right?

I talked about selling yourself earlier. A timeshare salesman doesn't come and say, “Hey, you're going to love going to Hawaii Beach. It does rain sometimes, and look, you're locking yourself into a 30-year contract. Maybe you're 50 now, but when you're 75, you don't want to fly to Hawaii. That's a pretty long flight. But you're going to love it for the next 5 years, as long as you get good weather.” No, they don't hedge themselves like that, right?

They say, “You're going to Hawaii for the next 20 years. You're going to love it—the beautiful beaches, the weather, everything. It's going to be your little tropical paradise.” So just remember, you don't want to be hedging yourself. Put out a price target that, when people see it, makes them think, “Hey, I'm going to make alpha here.”

It has to be reasonable. It has to be supported by facts. You have to have reasons to support it, but don't hedge yourself, okay? And remember, the judges are seeing a lot of pitches. If they see something that says, “The base case is up 15% or 20%,” they're going to say, “Oh, that's an average idea.”

It's human nature. When you see something that says, “Hey, my base case is 50%,” well, now we're talking. “My base case is plus 75%.” Now you're talking. You excite them. Remember, you're telling a story. Make sure it's something justifiable, that you can back it up and explain why you think it, but tell a good story. Be bold. Be aggressive. Don't hedge yourself.

Third thing: do the legwork. There's this famous short-seller maxim: if you see the CEO wearing a hard hat, it's a short, right? The opposite is true for stock pitches. If you can throw yourself on a slide wearing a hard hat, that's a sign you've done the legwork.

Honestly, wearing a hard hat and doing site diligence is generally not great for stock pitches or for investing, right? Going and visiting a coal mine, generally, you're not going to learn anything new when you visit the coal mine that makes you think, “Oh, this company's a buyer or a seller.” For the most part, when you do a stock visit, unless you do a ton of them and are trained to do them, the company can present it in such a way that anything looks good, right?

So I would say visiting a store, a mine, whatever, is not great for investing. But for stock pitches, it shows you've done the legwork. If you can say, “We went to this company's mine. We went to their headquarters,” whatever it is, and show that photo, that's just a little credibility that you've done the legwork. For stock pitches, that matters.

Again, everything's telling a story. Let me give another example. You go and say, “Hey, I think this company is undervalued because they're taking share from competitors.” If you say that, that's just a claim, right? If you say, “Last quarter, the company grew 10% and its key competitors grew 8%, so it's taking share,” okay, that's nice, but that's something anyone can know.

Now, let's talk about ways to spice it up. “I called 5 different industry insiders, and all of them think the company's new product is better than the competitors' products. Based on that, they're going to take market share.” That's something that, going back to my earlier point, is unique, edgy, and shows you've done the legwork.

Let's take it a step further. I called 5 customers, and those 5 customers said, “We are switching dollars to the company's product versus the competitor's product.” That's a unique thing that backs up everything you're saying. Now you're telling a story and giving the judges things that aren't in an SEC filing. You're giving the judges something unique that is completely legal.

Every time I say “unique,” I'm worried people are going to think, “Hey, break into the company's email and get some MNPI.” No, no, no. You can call customers, you can call competitors, and you can do expert calls. Especially because most stock pitches are done by people earlier in their careers—MBAs or college students—you've got some credibility when you call a customer and say, “Hey, I just want to talk. I'm learning about the industry.”

Most people will try to give college students and MBA students a solid and talk to them for free, whereas if you call and say, “Hey, I'm a 40-year-old research analyst,” they'll say, “Cool, go through an expert network. I don't want to talk to you.” So you've got a little bit of that.

I'll point to the CSL team, but Team DoorDash did this, too. They went and, at the end, said, “Hey, here's all the research we did.” I think Team DoorDash had around 40 expert calls. Again, 40 expert calls is probably overkill for a stock idea or to make an investment, but for a stock pitch, this is telling a story, right?

You're saying, “Hey, judges, you can trust me. Here's all the work that I've done on this.” The same goes if you're raising an SPV. I don't think you need to do 40 expert calls to understand an industry or something when raising an SPV. But when you say, “Hey, write a big check. Here's all the diligence,” people just feel more comfortable.

You've got to sell yourself. You've got to sell the story. So do the legwork. Go get a picture of yourself with a hard hat. Go to an industry conference and get a photo of yourself in front of the power association conference, pointing at that, and pitch the thing. Do the legwork. That's a really compelling part of a stock pitch, and that's the type of thing that puts you over the edge.

What to avoid? Three things to avoid that I see all the time when I work with, especially, college students and MBA students on stock pitches. First, excessive modeling. Every college student wants to show, “Hey, I've mastered Excel.” An MBA student says, “I've mastered Excel. Look how good this model is.”

I've seen stock pitches that are 10 pages, and 5 of them are the Excel model. They've got the income statement, the balance sheet, the cash flow, and then the DCF. That's 4, and then maybe 1 bonus one, I don't know.

Any time you spend more than 15 seconds on the model, you're killing yourself. Why? Numbers are boring. You want to say, “Hey, our price target is 150. It's supported by a DCF. You can see the assumptions of the DCF in the appendix.” Then, if there's a quick Q&A time, the judges can ask you questions about the DCF if they want. Guess what? Nobody does, right?

I'd actually argue that not only is talking about the model boring, but, as I talked about earlier, when you do a stock pitch, it's a lottery ticket. It's all upside, no downside. For a stock pitch, the more time you spend talking about your model, the more you're creating all downside and no upside.

Why? Because if a judge notices an error in your model, or even if your model is perfect but they notice an assumption they disagree with, all of a sudden you've taken them out of it, right? So spend 10 seconds on the model: “Our price target is 150. It's supported by the DCF. It's in the appendix.” Or don't even put it in the appendix; just have the judges ask you about it.

Any time you're spending talking about numbers and diving into the numbers, it's actually counterproductive and taking you out of the story, right? You want to be hitting them with what's unique: the legwork, the story. Spending time in the model is awful.

Drowning in risk. I kind of mentioned this earlier when I said, “Don't hedge yourself,” but you want to acknowledge the risks, say you've thought about them, and move on. In a pitch, you want 1 slide on the risks. Here's your risk, and you just want to say, “McDonald's: GLP-1s are a risk. We've thought about it. We've looked at the data. We don't think it's a risk.” Maybe a little bit more than that, but you don't want to spend a whole ton of time on the risk factors.

There is 1 exception to that. If you're investing in something that's completely binary, where the risk is so obvious and massive that it's close to binary, you need to acknowledge that risk. I'll give you an example: cigarette companies in the 1990s. They had that huge tobacco lawsuit, right? A lot of them filed for bankruptcy or had huge damages.

If you've got something that big and that obvious—if there's a going-concern warning or something—then you need to acknowledge it, and you need to talk about the downside. But there, guess what? The pitch is on the binary, right? So you're actually doing a different pitch, and you want to make sure, because that's a dangerous pitch.

Some places that pitch would work really well; some places that pitch would work really poorly. To go back to my earlier point, choose your games correctly. If you're doing something that's binary or has that huge risk, you're going to have to talk about it. But that's probably a very specialized pitch, right?

In general, you're pitching Facebook. You're pitching Facebook right now. Facebook is facing—I’m sure there's some type of EU investigation—but the real thing in the headlines for Facebook is that it's facing a lawsuit in, I think, Nevada and a few other places: “Were you addicting teens? Did you design Facebook, Instagram, or whatever to get teens addicted?” They're facing liabilities there.

Acknowledge it, say, “We think it’s covered. We think the consensus is right,” and move on. You don’t want to spend a lot of time diving into that. You spend tons of time on all downside and no upside.

Last thing: death by background. I see a lot of these pitches, and they’ll spend the first three pages of a 10-page deck on, “Here’s a 20-year background of this company.” No, absolutely not. Just say, “This is what the company does,” and move on.

In terms of selection, everything is about trying to work toward the pitch. It is a little bit easier to pitch a simple company that a lot of people know than a really specialized company. If you’re pitching a super-specialized chemical company, you might have to spend a little more time on, “Here’s what they actually do. Here’s where the chemicals go.” But there’s a background section of the 10-K. The judges can go read it. They can go look at it. They can do the work.

You just want to say enough so people know what the business is, and then you can get into your really unique stuff. Again, you’re telling a story. The more time you spend in the background, the worse. Tell the story and get to your best stuff.

Those are the things to avoid. The last thing is risk. It is funny saying this because, as I mentioned, this whole thing was designed by AI. I just said, “Here’s what I’m looking for. Move these slides around.” I really didn’t do a lot. The words on all of these slides are not necessarily perfect, because I had the AI do a lot of this.

The last thing I’ll remind you is that proper formatting is table stakes. There’s this old thing where you’re an analyst at an investment bank or a consulting firm, and you present this big pitch deck. On slide 17, your managing director circles something and says, “Hey, these two numbers don’t add up. Can you tell me what’s going on here?”

Why does that matter? It doesn’t matter in the absolute. They might also say, “Hey, this slide is formatted slightly differently from all the other slides in the deck.” That doesn’t matter in the absolute, either. What matters is that once they see one thing that’s sloppy, they can’t trust the rest of your work.

A stock pitch can be similar. I’ve seen stock pitches where the formatting switches from slide to slide. I’ve seen stock pitches where there’s one typo in the deck, or there’s one number off, or something else. The moment you have something like that, the judges are taken out of the story and your credibility goes down.

Design these yourself. Don’t do what I did and have AI put all the words in. Make sure all the words make sense. Make sure everything flows into your story. Make sure the formatting is good. Make sure all the numbers are right, and all that sort of stuff.

Having perfect formatting has very low upside—it’s table stakes—but it has really significant downside. A great pitch is probably going to lose to an average pitch if the average pitch has a normal slide deck and the great pitch has a terrible slide deck that keeps taking the judges out of the story.

One last thing: this was designed by AI, whatever. Go for the win. I want you to win the stock pitch competition.

I think I’ve rambled on about this for a long time. A lot of this does have overlap with an episode I did on how to get a job in investing, and I’ll include a link in the show notes. There are a lot of parallels because, again, when you’re trying to get a job in investing, you’re selling yourself. A lot of getting a job in investing is doing a stock pitch and saying, “Hey, I follow finance. I follow the markets. Here’s my stock pitch.”

There is some overlap here, but hopefully this was helpful. College season, NBA season, and stock pitch season are coming up.

You can find me at another value blog.com. You can find my podcast and all that sort of stuff. I’m always happy to help. I made this podcast because I’m always happy to help, but I also made it because I give the same advice over and over again. If you’re doing a stock pitch, listen to this podcast. Hopefully you learn from it. Hopefully it helps.

I’m not saying that everything I said here was perfect. Hopefully you can say, “I’d love it if everything here makes sense to you. Take it all. If 2 of the things made sense and everything else didn’t make sense, take the 2 things and ignore everything else. And if everything I said didn’t make any sense, do the opposite of me.”

I don’t care. It’s not my stock pitch; it’s your stock pitch. But, again, I’ve got a lot of experience with these. Hopefully everything I said here was helpful, and I’m always personally happy to be helpful if I can. That is my how-to-win-a-stock-pitch pitch. I’m going to wrap it up there, and we will chat soon. Okay.

>> Disclaimer. Nothing on this podcast should be considered investment advice. Guests or the host may have positions in any of the stocks mentioned during this podcast. Please do your own work and consult a financial advisor. Thanks.