🤝Sell-side Equity Research Job Matching

Having the skills but lacking a big-name school or employer can make landing a sell-side equity research job harder than it should be. I partner with banks and boutiques to get you noticed and save you time. SELL-SIDE RESEARCH ONLY!

Criteria:

  • If you have 1+ years of FULL-TIME equity research (sell-side and/or buy-side) experience, simply submit your resume. To protect your job security, your current employer will not see your profile.

  • If you don’t meet the above criteria, you MUST submit an actionable stock pitch and model to be considered. I will give you free pitch feedback and tell you whether you are accepted. (You are disallowed to resubmit until at least one month after your last submission)

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🧰 My advice on making yourself a competitive candidate.

Guideline and Tips (as of 1/28/2025)

Pitch structure guideline

  1. Conclusion up front: I am (don’t say “we”) long TICKER, market cap and price target, and % upside, implied IRR % over what time horizon (given equity market returns 7% p.a. historically, target 15%+)

  2. How did you get to your price target (multiple of future earnings/EBITDA/FCF, SoTP, etc.)

  3. What does the company do, how does it make money, what’s the industry structure and how it fits into the industry?

  4. Summarize the 2-3 theses points on the stocks up front. All theses need to affect the fundamental forecast and/or valuation.

  5. Dive into thesis points and provide evidence of research and numbers to support points – be sure to clearly explain how your view differs from consensus (i.e. the market); Focus most of your energy on fundamentals rather than multiple expansion.

  6. Summarize valuation (including slightly more detail than upfront), and conclude by reiterating your price target and % upside

  7. Include a financial summary and your model

Modeling

Model out revenue and cost drivers where applicable. Your are auto-rejected if you forecast total revenue based on historical growth rates, when company discloses business drivers. It tells me you did the mechanical work, but didn’t think about how the business makes money. For example:

  • E-commerce / payment: GMV / payment volume, take-rate, contribution margin, etc.

  • Commodities: sales volumes, production volume, average realized prices, all-in costs, etc.

  • Airlines: RevPar, Available Seat Miles, etc.

  • Cable / Subscription Media: ARPU, # of users, churn, etc.

Tips

  • Do not submit a quarterly earnings commentary or an initiation report. Do not fit your write-up into a pseudo-sell side broker template.

  • Pitch needs to be presentable, but don’t go crazy on formatting or number of exhibits. If you have no quality thesis, it’s still a bad pitch.

  • Don’t make a book report: We don’t need to know every single product the company sells or where are their production plants, unless they are key parts of your theses. Same goes for industry landscape, totally fine to state this is a duopoly, oligopoly or fragmented industry, but nothing more. 

  • Remove references of course name, student fund, CFA competition, etc. When included, it’s a glaring signal the pitch is stale.

  • Pitch needs to be actionable as of now, not an idea that worked in hindsight in 2022.

  • Use ChatGPT to make it more concise without losing informational value.

  • Theses need to be company specific.

  • What’s NOT a thesis:

    • Secular trends: “E-commerce industry is expected to grow X%” or “EV penetration will go up in the future”. Both are true, but why should YOUR company be the winner?

    • Macro: “My company is a long because consumer spending will rebound” Ok, why your company over other consumer companies?

    • Tactical: “I believe my stock will go up because investors will rotate into consumer defensive sector as a result of AI fear.” Ok, why not another consumer defensive company then?  

    • Praise PAST achievement: “The company has achieved 20% revenue CAGR or expanded margin by 100bps per year for the past 10 years, therefore it’s a buy.” We are buying into the future. You need to defend why it can continue to grow or expand margin at the same rate.

  • What is a thesis:

    • Stock currently trading below peer and its own historical multiple, I believe business will normalize to historical trends because this is a short-term issue.

    • This is a good business and I am paying 30x NTM EPS for a business that can compound EPS at 20%+ CAGR for next 2-3 years

    • Online gaming is hot. Flutter owns FanDuel, which I believe Flutter will spin out to get a DraftKings multiple and you get the legacy Flutter business for free.

    • This company has a cyclical legacy oil services segment and a fast-growing utilities business serving AI data centers. The market values it like a cyclical, but utilities-driven profit is rising, warranting a rerating to utility peers as growth accelerates.