On March 11-12, 2015, we, as the team from Thammasat University and the National Champion, were the representatives of CFA Society Thailand to compete with other 20 teams in CFA Institute Research Challenge, Asia-Pacific regional round. CFA Institute Research Challenge is the annual global competition in equity research held by CFA Institute primarily to promote best practices in equity research in investment industry. The team consists of Miss Apichaya  Parinyavitit, Miss Onjira  Saekang, Miss Papawee  Cherdchoobundit, Miss Sireethorn Lurojruang, and Mr. Vorayuth  Pikulsawad.          

Before the regional round, we got to compete with other 6 universities in national round. The subject company was Dynasty Ceramic Public Company Limited (DCC), which manufactures and retails ceramic tiles through its own outlet stores across Thailand. Unlike other case competitions, CFA Challenge is the equity research competition that takes a lot more time for writing the report and building strong arguments with supporting data. Thus, we started by visiting the stores of the Company and its competitors and analyzed it in detail. Then, we started to write the report and came up with the SELL recommendation on DCC even though it is Thailand?s leading tile manufacturer and retailer company. To convince the investors, we came up with 3 main reasons supporting our SELL recommendation: 1) Limited growth opportunity 2) Changing competitive landscape and 3) The stock is overvalued.