There were a couple discussions on the forum about the quality expected in a pitch when interviewing for a top notch fund, almost regardless of asset class (but within corporates). One particular comment jumped at me in that it referenced the amount of diligence (reference calls, proprietary research, cold calling, etc.) that can go into a pitch, even if just for an interview and having 1 week at your disposal. On that note, I'd like to source some of the best pitches you have ever seen (whether from Columbia's Value Investing newsletter, VIC, personal experience) to get a better grasp of what, practically, top-top pitches look like. I think I got a decent idea but been wrong before.
Thanks!
I've seem some crazy pitches during my career. We interviewed a guy who previously worked at BlackRock Fundamental Equities and he had one of the best pitches I've seen to date.
In 2011, he pitched Netflix (this was way before Netflix was on everyone's radar.) It was pretty comprehensive. He addressed the common questions:
- What's their TAM?
- If they penetration their TAM by X amount per year, what will their valuation look like?
- Why were they so successful?
- How will competitors respond?
- Why are their competitors ill-positioned to compete? Quantify it
- What will their unit economics look like at scale?
- How do you know management is good?
- How do we know that this isn't a FAD?
- Potential merger arbitrage opportunity?
- etc. etc.
He did very well addressing these questions. He then proceeded to address the future of streaming.
- He then presented his own market research basically explaining why he thinks streaming is the future.
- He then presented his own market research that showed that traditional movie theaters are declining and the vast majority of people prefer to watch movies/ content at home.
- He conducted his own research that showed that the onset of 'Smart TVs' will lead to Netflix's penetration to increase.
- He even pontificated that Netflix will be able to create their own content at scale.
- etc. etc.
What's really impressive is that this was all in 2011! Nobody was really paying attention to streaming back then.
Needless to say, he hit the nail on the head. Netflix is up 16x since then (35x at peak).
He worked with us for a couple years and then left to work at Renaissance. Definitely one of the best analysts we had.
Interested in this topic as well. It's worth pointing out that a good pitch for an interview does not necessarily equate to the best pitch that an analyst would make to a PM, and a well-articulated pitch does not necessarily equate to a good stock pick. While not exactly "pitches", I think activist presentations are some of the best resources for learning what to look for.
Besides that, here are two entries from VIC that were incredibly prescient:
Applied Optoelectronics Inc (AAOI): Value Investors Club / APPLIED OPTOELECTRONICS INC (AAOI)
I'm not familiar with the name outside of this writeup, but this was posted quite literally at the stock's peak about a week before it crashed.
Celsius Holdings (CELH): Value Investors Club / CELSIUS HOLDINGS INC (CELH)
Another great writeup, but the author happened to exit right before the stock really took off.