Days ago, the South China Regional Final of the CFA Institute Research Challenge 2024-2025 came to a successful conclusion. After exciting and fierce competitions, the team LYPE, comprised of students Li Chuyan, Lin Kaihang, Liu Yang, Shi Xuzhang, and Yu Qiyuan from the School of Management and Economics (SME), The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen), stood out from many participating teams by virtue of in-depth research on the research target, excellent analytical ability, and clear and fluent expression, qualified for the East Asian Region online competition as a second place winner of the South China Regional Final representing South China. Among them, Yu Qiyuan won the Best Individual Performance Award.

The CFA Institute Research Challenge, held for over 20 years, is an all-English analytical research competition for finance students from universities around the world. It invites top universities worldwide to participate in the competition every year. The student teams will conduct research and analysis on a listed company, demonstrate their ability to write reports and deliver speeches, and participate in a test about promoting the best implementation method of stock research and company analysis. The 2023-2024 competition attracted more than 1,000 colleges and universities from nearly 100 countries. This year, the competition consists of local, sub-regional, regional, and global divisions. Now there are four local competition areas in the Chinese mainland: North China, East China, South China, and Central and West China. The winning teams selected from the local competition areas will be qualified for the East Asian regional competition.

Research Target of the Competition

BYD (002594)

Professor’s Comments

Ye Shuai

Assistant Professor, SME, CUHK-Shenzhen

Introduction to the Competition

This competition continues to emphasize the rigor of international financial analysis, requiring participants to thoroughly combine theory and practice to conduct a comprehensive value assessment of the target company. The competition not only assesses hard skills such as financial modeling and industrial research but also emphasizes logical self-consistency, risk quantification, and ESG integration, highly demanding on the command and practice of financial tools. Taking BYD, an industrial leader, as the research object, it effectively tests the participants’ understanding depth of the industrial chain of new energy vehicles. The competition requires participating teams to collect public data, conduct research on corporate personnel, use financial tools for analysis, and build valuation models for calculation based on limited public data, fully simulating workplace scenarios of sell-side analysts.

Comments on the Team

With solid financial expertise and practical industrial experience, the team members demonstrated excellent business analysis capabilities in the competition. They revealed their extensive knowledge in the construction of an overall strategic perspective and other details: from the judgment of macro industrial trends to the dismantling of micro financial indicators, their analysis is underpinned by a strict logical chain in every respect. In the core industry analysis and financial modeling, the team successfully exhibited the foresight and data collection and analysis capabilities, not only accurately grasping the value transmission rules of the industrial chain of new energy vehicles but also quantifying the prospects of the company and the market through financial models. The PPT presentation is particularly professional and eye-catching: each slide follows the principle that “title is conclusion” and features impressive core data visualization. The simplified expression of wisdom allowed the judges to quickly absorb knowledge and the team to fully convey the valuation logic within just 10 minutes.