Tag Archives: Financial Research

Introduction

Investment Banking is a special type of banking that helps organizations or individuals raise capital and provides consulting services to them. It helps in conducting large complicated transactions such as mergers or acquisitions or raising an initial public offering (IPO) using underwriting.

Investment Bankers are experts in the field of finance who have their fingers on the pulse of the market. As acknowledged worldwide this is one of the most complex financial mechanisms in the world.

As has been the case with different sectors, it has been for some time now that organizations have started investment banking outsourcing services to third-party vendors as well. Outsourcing one means giving the authority to outsource one of its services to these third-party vendors so that the company can save on operating costs and get specialized services from highly skilled staff- all this while ensuring adequate data security and adherence to regulatory compliances.

This helps organizations not only streamline their services but also provide value-added services to customers that they couldn’t have thought about earlier.

It is important to note that the nature of investment banking outsourcing and the services provided by vendors have evolved alongside technological advancements. The first and foremost is business digitization, which has resulted in increased transparency and visibility for clients, as well as a better end-user experience for customers. This has resulted in improved strategic partnerships and, as a result, higher quality work being outsourced by investment banking outsourcing clients, which can only be met with strategic partners.

Challenges Faced by Investment Banks

Modern investment banking faces various kinds of challenges that are listed below:

Challenges Faced By Investment Banks

Challenges Faced By Investment Banks

Scarce Capital Resources

Due to recession and depression all over the world, almost all markets, companies, and individuals are not comfortable investing their money in the capital markets. This has created a world where capital resources have become scarce. The job of an investment banker is to invest capital more efficiently, but due to the scarcity of resources, there is a reduced business for investment banks in general.

Need to Reduce Costs

Markets have become more competitive. As a result, the cost of goods and services is decreasing. This has an impact on the finance industry as well. Investment banks’ margins are shrinking, and thus their cost of capital is decreasing. As a result, they must reduce costs to encourage their investors to invest money.

Increased Regulations

The new structured products created and sold by investment banks go through strict regulations since the mortgage crisis in 2008. This creates a limit on the operations of investment banks. These increases cost for investment banks and they have to maintain a different department of qualified professionals so that they could create and bring in new investment opportunities after scrutinizing them.

Technology Disruptions

Rapid technological advancements have drastically altered every industry in the world, including investment banking. The fintech industry has emerged over the years as new technology. This industry revolves around providing the same financial services at a lower cost. They have access to cutting-edge technology and a modern network, allowing them to raise capital at a lower cost.

Cross Selling Complexities

A huge area of the investment banking services sector relies on cross-selling. For example, if someone is looking for mergers and acquisitions, the investment bankers provide them with the services such as issue management, capital structure advisory, and many more. This way they bring value to their clients. But due to limited budgets, they are limited to the services they offer. The declining budget causes decreased revenue for research and other departments.

Benefits of Investment Banking Outsourcing

There are several reasons why investment banking outsourcing is becoming increasingly popular. We have tried to highlight some of these reasons below. They are:

Benefits of Investment Banking

Benefits of Investment Banking

Focus on Core Business

Investment banking outsourcing can help companies in focusing on their core competencies rather than focusing on mundane tasks and being worried about their day-to-day operations.

Controlled Costs

Cutting operational costs is a challenge that exists with organizations throughout. Investment banking outsourcing provides an avenue where companies can take care of differences in the relative value of currencies to derive as much as 30-50% savings in costs.

Increased Efficiency

Investment banking outsourcing is a specialized operation and the workers who work for these banks need to be highly skilled for this. A similar talent of MBA’s exists in low-cost destinations like India where the operations can be outsourced to them. Highly skilled talent helps in improving the efficiency of investment banking services.

Changing Economic Factors

In today’s uncertain world, the political dynamics are changing daily. This has an impact on the economies of the world and since we are so intertwined today the ripple effects of adverse conditions in a globally connected country are bound to have effects on the whole world. Investment banking outsourcing ensures the risks are well hedged with specialized partners operating from different geographies across the world.

Technological Changes

Investment banking outsourcing has ensured that the companies are up to date with the latest technological advancements that are occurring worldwide at a fraction of the cost had they invested real-time into adopting them. The use of the latest technologies by third parties ensures that all the technological challenges are met.

Time Zone Advantage

The gap in time zones between your country and the area you are outsourcing to, in addition to the cost advantage, is another important benefit. By doing so, you can focus on your primary tasks all day long while also having finished your day-to-day operations by the time you get up the next day. It gives you the benefit of round-the-clock business operations.

Magistral’s Services on Investment Banking Outsourcing

The outsourcing of investment banking may be a way to cut operating expenses. In an era of growing complexity in both established and new industries, investment banks are extremely nuanced. Smaller investment banks have a difficult time juggling their project pipelines and manpower needs. Medium-sized banks are eager to develop their expertise in emerging industries, which are bustling with activity and volume. However, large banks are more concerned with cutting costs while maintaining the quality of the services they provide to their customers. Magistral provides a range of service options to support Investment Banks.

Some of the services that are associated with Investment Banking Outsourcing that is offered by Magistral consulting are:

-Deal Sourcing: Performing industry and market analysis, finding potential targets, and publishing newsletters are various kinds of services provided under deal sourcing.

-Data Cleansing: Data cleansing and mining are done to perform analysis on suitable data.

-Valuations: Valuations are done by creating financial models by various methods such as LBO/DCF Modelling, Comparable Analysis, Precedent Transaction Analysis, and Impact Analysis.

-Due Diligence:  Research-based due diligence both primary and secondary are performed to uncover the true potential of an asset while giving a completely independent opinion on investment quality.

-Deal Execution: Teasers and Investment Memorandums are made along with identifying the potential investors/buyers.

-Portfolio Management: Providing ESG compliance monitoring, preparing financial reports, business development support, and procurement support is provided.

-Equity Research and Analysis: The services provided under this head include fundamental analysis, quantitative analysis, credit analysis, and country analysis.

-Marketing: This includes creating white papers, case studies, thought papers, CRM management, etc.

About Magistral Consulting

Magistral Consulting has helped multiple funds and companies in outsourcing operations activities. It has service offerings for Private Equity, Venture Capital, Family Offices, Investment Banks, Asset Managers, Hedge Funds, Financial Consultants, Real Estate, REITs, RE funds, Corporates, and Portfolio companies. Its functional expertise is around Deal origination, Deal Execution, Due Diligence, Financial Modelling, Portfolio Management, and Equity Research.

For setting up an appointment with a Magistral representative visit www.magistralconsulting.com/contact

About the Author

The article is Authored by the Marketing Department of Magistral Consulting. For any business inquiries, you could reach out to  prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com

What is an Outsourced CFO?

In today’s outsourced and globally connected business world there are many functions of businesses that are being outsourced like accounting, payroll, operations, IT, and marketing among others. Unfortunately, not many companies are aware that finance as a function can be outsourced too.

Herein, comes the importance of an Outsourced CFO. An outsourced CFO is a financial expert who provides financial services on a part-time or full-time basis to companies. The role of an outsourced CFO is to provide strategic insights as well as provide expertise in areas such as formulating strategy or providing core financial services help. This includes areas such as support in finding cash flows, raising capital, implementing more efficient systems, or formulating growth strategies. Usually, outsourced CFOs have considerable experience performing high-level financial roles as they may have worked in corporate finance roles in other reputed organizations.

Why one should hire an Outsourced CFO?

Outsourced CFOs can lead up to 40-50% savings in costs. About 80% of financial services executives outsource or offshore some of their services.   Highlighted below are some of the top reasons for outsourcing this critical finance function.

Benefits of Outsourced CFO

Benefits of Outsourced CFO

-Currently undergoing growth – This is usually the case for companies that are witnessing a lot of growth. A common example could be growth related to the launch of new products or say when a company is entering a new market.

-Resolving key business challenges – This comes into the picture when a company for instance is trying to resolve challenges such as cash flow, cost cutting, or looking to improve operational efficiencies.

-Raising debt or equity capital – Outsourced CFO can be of great help especially when companies are looking to raise capital. They do so by assisting in strategy formulation for it, due diligence, and in raising capital in terms of debt or equity mix.

-Maximizing margins – By analyzing current spending and costs, the outsourced CFO can suggest improvements that can be made in spending.

-Need for an interim CFO – This normally is the case when there is a need felt to place an interim CFO, especially in cases where an organization is transitioning from one CFO to another or a need is felt to outsource an organization’s finance function simply because someone else can do it better.

-Taking advantage of consulting services- An organization can look to hire an outsourced CFO simply because they can do the task better.

How does an Outsourced CFO provide value?

We have already seen why companies should look forward to outsourcing their services to a third-party service provider. In this section, we will look at some of the key benefits that are provided by an outsourced CFO. It must also be mentioned here that there are cost implications associated with hiring a CFO. Smaller companies may not have the budget to hire a CFO. This means they can incur a lot of savings by outsourcing this function which can be at a fraction of the costs of the salaries that are paid to a CFO. Not to mention the availability of talent and global access to them without incurring many operational headaches. These talents are simply at a third company party’s disposal the benefit of which can be reaped by companies.

There are some of the other benefits which an outsourced CFO can provide. Some of them are:

-They help in financial planning and analysis by providing assistance in the form of budgeting, and forecasting future revenue or cash flows for a company.

-They can help an organization in assessing its strengths and weaknesses vis a vis competition.

-Help in designing complex business models which necessitate the use of techniques such as NPV and IRR.

-Help in analyzing spending and cost incurred by a company and thereby suggest improvements in cost cutdowns.

-Assistance with financial statement preparation.

-Assistance with yearly financial reporting.

Top 10 Outsourced CFO services

A question that arises naturally is what kind of services are provided by Outsourced CFO.

Listed below are the top 10 services –

Top Outsourced CFO Services

Top Outsourced CFO Services

-Financial Strategy – One of the key benefits of outsourcing CFO services is in designing a company’s financial strategy. These are designed both short term as well as long term.

-Forecasting – Forecasting for the future is one of the key functions of any finance division of an organization. Preparation of the details helps in planning an operational roadmap for an organization. It requires a strategic understanding of requirements, assessing current and future capabilities of a company, competition analysis, and mastery in building financial models

-Financial systems strategy and design – With growth, it becomes imperative for any organization to implement software and improve process that can match an organization’s growth strategy. An outsourced CFO can help address this pain point by redesigning systems and suggesting improvements in current processes.

-Budgeting – Managing budgets is one of the key functions of the finance function. Normally budgeting is done for a 5–10-year time horizon. Budgeting helps to plan spending and future revenues in great detail.

-Financial statement preparation – An outsourced CFO can help in preparing financial statements as well as interpreting their consequences. This is the most useful information for any organization.

-Raising capital – Here a person is introduced to a host of investors, people or organizations who can help a company in raising its capital.

-Capital structure – This is done by suggesting which would be a better route – debt or equity or a mix of both.

-Interim CFO services – This service is most useful to avail of in case there is a transition from one CFO to the next or in cases where low-cost outsourcing seems to be a better option.

-Cost cutting – Costs are an important factor in decision-making. Outsourcing its services to a third party can help in this.

-Complex decision making – This is especially true with companies where complex decision making is involved and which requires the knowledge and expertise of a person. Examples could be making models for Mergers and Acquisitions, management buyouts, etc.

How can Magistral help in providing CFO services?

Magistral offers Portfolio Management services for varied kinds of the portfolio of companies such as Private Equity or a Venture Capital fund. For all the investors who sit on multiple boards, it is a headache, to implement something in a company that worked in another portfolio company. The problem is more acute when all companies are in similar industries and are facing quite similar headwinds. Limited supervision time available to board members, unavailability of resources across companies, and implementation knowledge held in a single portfolio company, all play spoilsport. It’s like re-inventing the wheel every time for the same problem.

We help portfolio managers in centralizing their Marketing (mostly digital), Strategy (Fund-raising and Exits), and Finance at fraction of the cost required to have dedicated functions in each portfolio company, big or small. The off-shored extended team also ensures no knowledge is lost for similar projects across companies and multiple projects in multiple companies can run at the same time, prioritized as per the schedule of board meetings. Learning, of course, is cross-pollinated across projects.

Our service offerings for portfolio and other companies are:

-Strategy: Identifying add-on acquisitions and potential buyers, fundraising, exit strategy, growth strategy, and content marketing

-Analytics: Financial reporting and analysis, preparing dashboards, data visualization, text cleaning and mining, predictive modeling, KPI tracking, and web scraping

-Sales: List generation, CRM cleansing and management, competitive intelligence, and social media management.

-Financial planning: Budget preparation, forecasting, and competitive quarterly earnings updating.

-Procurement: Spend analysis, vendor identification and management, spend base cost reduction, category strategy, RFP support and procurement strategy.

About Magistral Consulting

Magistral Consulting has helped multiple funds and companies in outsourcing operations activities. It has service offerings for Private Equity, Venture Capital, Family Offices, Investment Banks, Asset Managers, Hedge Funds, Financial Consultants, Real Estate, REITs, RE funds, Corporates and Portfolio companies. Its functional expertise is in Deal origination, Deal Execution, Due Diligence, Financial Modeling, Portfolio Management and Equity Research.

For setting up an appointment with a Magistral representative visit www.magistralconsulting.com/contact

About the Author

The article is Authored by the Marketing Department of Magistral Consulting. For any business inquiries, you could reach out to prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsulting.com

Introduction

Around the globe, there is a trillion-dollar business of investing in all sorts of assets like equity, both public and private, real estate, and upcoming assets like cryptocurrencies. Once the investment is made, the task on the part of the investor shifts to investment management. There are many activities of investment management that could be outsourced and that is what leads us to analyze the stream of investment management outsourcing. Investment management and hence investment management outsourcing takes all forms depending on the asset being invested in, and the prime business of the asset or investment manager.

Here we take a look at major activities of each type of investment manager or asset manager which could be effectively outsourced to save on costs and improve quality.

Who Should Outsource Investment Management and How?

Outsourced Investment Management

Outsourced Investment Management for different types of Asset Managers

Private Equity and Venture Capital firms

The underlying asset that a Private Equity or a Venture Capital firm invests in is equity. Sometimes it’s for stocks listed on exchanges but most of the time these are private investments, the target of which are start-ups are unlisted companies.

In the PE/VC value chain of investing, there are activities like Fundraising, Deal origination, Deal execution, and Portfolio Management. Quite a few activities in these departments are outsourceable. For fundraising, the activities like investor reach-out, investor profiling, CRMs, newsletters, white papers, and data management jobs could be effectively outsourced. Regarding, Deal origination, the deal pipeline management has a great potential of outsourcing along with initial due diligence. Deal execution processes like valuation and financial modeling are templatized and could be considered. Portfolio management has varied activities and outsourcing potential vary as per the nature of the business of the portfolio companies. Most activities related to Strategy and Marketing have great potential for outsourcing when it comes to Portfolio Management.

Hedge Funds

For the most common type of hedge fund out there, that is a long-short equity hedge fund, multiple activities should be considered for outsourcing. Equity Research is the foremost one. The research that is done for the investors is almost always best to be outsourced. Apart from Equity Research, Fund Administration and Fund Accounting are better done when outsourced. It makes sense from the cost and expertise point of view. Marketing activities almost always have great potential for offshoring.

Real Estate

Managing a real estate asset after the investment comprises standardized work-streams. Most of it relates to collecting data, analyzing it, making reports, and raising red flags if any. Accounting and administration along with research has a great potential for outsourcing

Investment Banks

Investment Banks are into all sorts of assets directly or for their clients. For the varying types of their work pallet, there is varying potential for outsourcing.  For investment banks, activities that are commonly outsourced are Equity Research, Security-based Investment Research, development of excel or other automated models, investment research for private investments, marketing, deal origination, and deal execution. In fact, 30-50% of all activities performed by an investment bank has a solid potential for outsourcing that may be explored

Asset Management Firms

These are for specialized asset managers like managers managing a portfolio of crypto or commodities. There is no one size fits all approach to outsourcing for these asset managers. As a thumb rule, everything related to technology like platform development, automation, website development, or software development can be outsourced. Also, anything that is of support function’s nature like Strategy or Marketing could be looked at.

Models of engagement with the outsourcing vendor

Once you have made your mind to explore outsourcing, the biggest concern is around the way an outsourced vendor or the service provider would work with you and your team. There are three established models of working while outsourcing. These are FTEs, Retainer, and Ad-hoc. Some progressive vendors like Magistral are signing up success-based contracts too.

Outsourcing Engagement Model

Investment Management Outsourcing Engagement Model

FTEs

FTE the most common engagement model for investment management outsourcing.

FTE stands for Full-Time Employee equivalent. It’s like a virtual employee who is operating from a different country. This virtual employee could be coordinated with, on email, video calls, WhatsApp, chats, or any other mode that is suitable to the client and is convenient as per time zone differences. It looks like a person is aligned with the client full time and he works seamlessly with the client. That is always the case, but the vendor, his processes, training, supervision, and culture play a big role in ensuring the continuity of services. A vendor enables the FTE to perform optimally by providing training and desired supervision. The vendor’s processes ensure that the client is insulated from the bad performance of FTE as the work is supervised by more senior resources. In case the individual decides to leave the organization, similarly, qualified and trained professionals are available on the bench for the replacement. That is the reason it makes sense to work with individuals through the service providers who may be an established name in their industry. Working directly through freelancing websites or hiring directly exposes clients to manage costs and risks, which is not the case while dealing with an established service provider.

This also is the cheapest model on per hour basis. But it is inflexible as there may be contractual obligations for a minimum period of support. This case is more prominent when resources are specialized in niche skills

Typical jobs that require FTE engagements are operational, where the offshored team works with the onsite team seamlessly. So, if a task is part of your ongoing investment management operations, mostly it will be outsourced on FTE-based engagement.

Retainer

You know there is a need for outsourcing tasks. At the same time, you think a full-time individual working on these jobs may be overkill. In these situations, where tasks just require some hours every month, the retainer model of engagement comes in handy. Say rather than hiring an FTE or a full-time virtual employee, you would only want 100 hours’ worth of tasks outsourced every month. A retainer is far more flexible than FTEs but costs higher on per hour cost basis. Typical jobs that are suitable for retainer-type outsourcing are newsletters, MIS, reports preparation, and other marketing-related tasks.

Ad-hoc Projects

As the name suggests the engagement is for one-time projects only. A client gives out the scope of the project. The service provider or the vendor provides a proposal that carries, scope of work, timelines, and commercials. The project kicks off after the client signs off the proposal and is paid after the delivery of the project. Almost any project that is strategic and is not expected to be repeated on an ongoing basis is an ideal candidate for ad-hoc based outsourcing. Also, it’s an ideal mode, if you would want to test the services of a vendor before signing a longer-term contract. It is the most flexible outsourcing arrangement as projects may start or end at your convenience, but at the same time, it is costliest in terms of cost per hour basis.

Success Based

Most traditional service providers shy from signing a success-based engagement. The fear stems from the trust deficit, performance fears, and the complications of defining a success scenario. Magistral signs success-based engagements with clients, with whom it has existing relationships. Existing relationships take the risks related to trust deficit and performance. A mutually agreed “success” scenario could also be defined in those situations. The tasks that are outsourced under these arrangements usually relate to fundraising, deal sourcing, and meetings’ set up

Magistral has helped more than 100 clients in outsourcing and offshoring multiple activities related to the Investment Management process. To start a conversation drop a line here.

About Magistral

Magistral Consulting has helped multiple funds and companies in outsourcing operations activities. It has service offerings for Private Equity, Venture Capital, Family Offices, Investment Banks, Asset Managers, Hedge Funds, Financial Consultants, Real Estate, REITs, RE funds, Corporates and Portfolio companies. Its functional expertise is around Deal origination, Deal Execution, Due Diligence, Financial Modeling, Portfolio Management and Equity Research

For setting up an appointment with a Magistral representative visit www.magistralconsulting.com/contact

About the Author

The Author, Prabhash Choudhary is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsutling.com for any queries or business inquiries.

 

 

 

Introduction

Equity Research of listed stocks forms a major part of operations in Hedge Funds, Investment Banks, and many Asset Management firms.

Though methods may differ, all the exercises related to equity research mostly pertain to finding the intrinsic value of the stock and then inferring if it’s overvalued or undervalued currently, prompting buy sell or hold recommendations for the asset managers or their clients.

What makes an equity research exercise comprehensive?

Though equity research exercise could potentially be a theoretical exercise where an Equity Research analyst puts in a few hours’ of efforts, crunch numbers, and comes up with a recommendation.  These models are almost always prepared and just need P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cashflow numbers, which are available in the public domain for a listed stock, fed in, to find out the valuation and the recommendation for the stock.

It is however the further details that determine the quality of the research. These are a variety of sources, qualitative inputs and their quantification, Evaluation of the ongoing news and buzz related to the stock, social media activity, rumors, and the subjective calls of analyst that makes the difference. It’s amazing that some analysts even track the brand of the watch that the CEO wears to the analyst conferences. They make subjective calls on the stock on an information point as minute as that or say body language of the management in a conference call.

 

If a stock is to watched as closely as needed to take calls worth millions, it’s not possible for an equity research analyst to proceed in a templated way for all the stocks she needs to track. It needs to go much beyond that.

Equity Research Inputs

Parts of a comprehensive Equity Research exercise

Here is what differentiates a comprehensive analysis from a basic one

Sources of Information: Sources of information if more the merrier. Sources of information if diverse allows us to analyze the stock closely. For example, a database that carries information about all the legal cases pending against a company would add color to the analysis that will have a material impact on the overall recommendation for the stock. Usual sources of information are P&L, Balance sheet, and cash flow statements, all of which are publicly available for a listed stock apart from news about the stock, regulatory filings, 10Ks, conference calls, and ESG related compliance documents.

 

Forecast and Assumptions: A financial forecast can easily be put together sometimes by just extrapolating the past growth in the future. That is a simplistic but not correct way of doing it. The heart of a financial or earnings forecast is the assumptions made to arrive at the same. All assumptions need to be reasonable and preferably vetted by industry experts. Companies may be bullish about their latest strategy and its financial impact, but that needs to be looked at cautiously if at all it is going to lead to any impact, and if yes, how much. That is where industry studies come into play. A company forecast needs to be compared with industry forecasts and if the company’s growth forecasts are more than that of the industry, has there been any past instances when the company had beaten the industry forecasts. For example, if a healthcare company is planning to launch equipment that will take a leadership position in five years, has there been any past instance for this healthcare company to take a leadership position within five years of the launch in the past? The key to a robust model is going into detail about all the assumptions and making sure all assumptions are validated by past numbers.

 

Company Valuation Analysis

Equity Quantitative Research methods aim at valuing the company using more than one method to see if all valuations are consistent with each other. If there is a huge variation in valuations of companies by different methods, the analyst needs to arrive at the best suitable valuation with sound reasoning. The most common equity research models to find out the valuation of a company are DCF modeling, Relative Valuation, Sum of Parts, and Risk Assessment. DCF that stands for Discounted Cash Flow analyzes all the future cash flows of the company and discounts it to the present value. Relative Valuation compares the company valuation with peers to see if it is relatively undervalued or overvalued. The Sum of parts breaks a big company into smaller chunks and finds if the sum of all parts of valuations of a company is equal to the overall company valuation. The risk assessment identifies all the risks and quantifies the material impact of risks into the valuation

 

Qualitative Assessment

Numbers do tell the story but miss while indicating the future, which is unknown. That is where the qualitative inputs come into play. An experienced analyst can convert these qualitative inputs into quantitative ones that impact the valuation. Some of these qualitative inputs are quality of management, Competitive intensity in the industry, ESG initiatives and risks, and analyzing Porter’s 5 forces. It’s to be noted that Porter’s 5 forces is a highly qualitative model and needs to be put on a quantification scale.

Different institutions approach equity research differently depending on their business and operational needs. Here is how Equity Research differs across institutions

Equity Research for Investment Banks

Equity Research at Investment Banks is as much as a Marketing exercise as it is operational. Usually, an Investment Bank would send stock recommendations to all its current and potential clients. These recommendations are sometimes not detailed as the detailed research is kept for high paying clients. An equity research report is prepared for every stock. The report is templated and carry similar content for all the stocks that the bank tracks. It also suggests the buy, sell, or hold recommendations along with the price range to expect for each stock. Detailed equity research is also done for the buy-side. There are multiple research report templates that are available with an Investment Bank.

Earlier the research cost was added to the brokerage cost for an investment bank. Now a regulatory notification in Europe bars Investment Banks from clubbing brokerage and research costs together. This means now research needs to be high quality and needs to be provided only when the client demands. It’s just a matter of time that these regulations catch hold in the United States and other financial markets across the world.

Equity Research for Hedge Funds

Equity Research for hedge funds is done towards the aim of portfolio management and taking long and short positions regarding listed stocks

Hedge Funds are quite secretive about the methodology they follow while picking up stocks. Sometimes the secrecy is warranted as they have something that is really unique but most of the time it’s just a marketing gimmick to avoid further questioning about their methodology. Many claim to use Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to pick up the stocks. Equity Research in Hedge Fund parlance is the most critical part of Operations. There is also a huge reliance on Technology with trades mostly intraday and sometimes in milliseconds!! But there is nothing that has replaced the good old fundamental analysis.

Hedge Funds also specialize in technical analysis apart from fundamental analysis. Technical analysis uses mathematical formulas to project trends and thus the future stock price for short term trades.

Equity Research for Private Equity

Private Equity usually deals in Private stocks but sometimes they do pick up stake in listed companies as well. Equity Research in Private Equity is very different than what is done in Hedge Funds and Investment Banks. It is because mostly Private Equity is interested in buying a significant stake and thus has far more information and management bandwidth at its disposal. It uses that leverage to get and analyze information that is usually not available in the public domain.

 

Equity Research for Asset Managers

All other forms of Equity Research vary in complexity and methodology but mostly sticking to finding the intrinsic value of the stock with the aim of finding undervalued stocks for investments. Some Asset Managers specifically perform equity research for retail investors.

 

Magistral’s Approach for Equity Research

Magistral is an equity research firm that focuses on Fundamental Research to find out the intrinsic value of a stock using multiple sources. Our methodology takes into account multiple sources to start with and those sources are continually refreshed to update the model to carry the latest intelligence. We also prepare customized Equity Research report. Here is how our Equity Research Process looks like

Magistral' Equity Research Approach

Magistral’s Equity Research Methodology

 

Our equity research services are customizable and scalable as per clients’ requirements. Magistral has delivered multiple Equity Research projects in the past

About Magistral

Magistral Consulting has helped multiple funds and companies in outsourcing operations activities. It has service offerings for Private Equity, Venture Capital, Family Offices, Investment Banks, Asset Managers, Hedge Funds, Financial Consultants, Real Estate, REITs, RE funds, Corporates and Portfolio companies. Its functional expertise is around Deal origination, Deal Execution, Due Diligence, Financial Modeling, Portfolio Management and Equity Research

For setting up an appointment with a Magistral representative visit www.magistralconsulting.com/contact

About the Author

The Author, Prabhash Choudhary is the CEO of Magistral Consulting and can be reached at Prabhash.choudhary@magistralconsutling.com for any queries or business inquiries.