Boise State Business Students Advance to Americas Challenge Finals

Four Boise State students won the first round of the CFA Institute Research Challenge and have qualified for the Americas Challenge Final in New York April 9-10.  The team 

will meet 45 teams from the United States, Canada and South America.

Senior finance majors Matthew Henderson, Chaz Johnson, Shawn McFarland and Ethan Hendrickson topped teams from the University of Cincinnati, Miami of Ohio, Xavier, Northwest Nazarene and George Fox to win the competition.

“The students were able to employ analysis, organization and decision-making skills that go well beyond a typical academic experience,” said Boise State finance professor Keith Harvey, who served as the team’s faculty adviser. Stephen White, an investment manager and partner in Boise-based Berkeley Inc., served as its industry mentor.

“This was a great opportunity for the students to understand the intensive analysis that goes into developing a research report on Wall Street,” White said. “The judges’ questions are very similar to those analysts might field from their clients. This kind of experience is invaluable for students. It’s real world, fraught with hard work, tight deadlines and uncertainty.”

The CFA Institute Research Challenge is a global competition that tests the analytic, valuation, report writing and presentation skills of university students.  Local CFA societies host and launch local competitions involving teams of three to five business and finance students from participating universities who work directly with a local company in researching and preparing a company analysis.  CFA Society of Idaho hosted the local competition for the fourth consecutive year.

This year’s subject company for Idaho student teams was Boise Inc., which controls the paper and packaging assets of the former publicly traded Boise Cascade.  Each team wrote a research report similar to that written by a Wall Street analyst in which the students analyzed the company, estimated the stock’s value and assigned a rating of Buy, Hold or Sell.  A week later, each team presented its findings in an oral presentation before a panel of judges.

“The CFA Investment Challenge has been a great opportunity to learn more about financial analysis and get experience doing the work that a professional analyst would do,” Henderson said.

“I learned that this type of financial analysis is really what I want to be doing as a career. It’s really a lot of fun and that’s what I want out of a career,” Hendrickson said.

Last year, nearly 2,500 students from more than 546 universities in 45 countries participated and learned best practices in equity research from leading industry experts as part of the CFA Investment Challenge.