A group of UTM delegates placed in the top five against teams from universities across the province in the University of Waterloo’s third Stock Pitch Competition last month.
Alice Li, Ryan Mok, and Samuel Tay represented UTM at the case competition. The two-part competition involved choosing a North American stock and pitching it to a panel of judges as a stock worth purchasing.
In the first round, teams were assessed based on the quality of their PowerPoint presentations.
The second part of the competition took place at Waterloo, where each team was required to deliver its presentation separately to the judges. Once the top five teams were chosen, they were required to pitch their stock in a presentation to all the participants at the competition.
“We were surprised to be called into the top five and we were beyond excited to have made it. We were not called into the top three, so that means we placed fourth or fifth,” said Li, adding that the judges only made distinctions among the top three teams.
According to the UW Stock Pitch Competition website, the event was “oversubscribed”, with 90 delegates representing 37 teams from postsecondary schools across the province.
The three winning teams split a cash prize of $1,800.
The UTM team was sponsored by the Institute for Management and Innovation, which covers the registration fees for student teams participating at business competitions off campus.
This was the first year that UTM has participated in the Waterloo competition.
“It was a great experience and definitely exciting when competing against other schools,” said Mok.
Li mentioned that the team benefited from the mentorship of management professor Tanya Kirsch.
“[Kirsch] Skyped us the day before the competition to help us make sure our quantitative financial analysis was as strong as possible,” said Li.
Li said the team would look into participating in additional case competitions next semester.
“Since we tried out finance this time, we are thinking of doing something different next time such as marketing or accounting,” she said.
