Salve Regina University students won the top prize at a national financial analysis competition in Chicago last week, with a second Salve team finishing fourth in a field of 93 colleges and universities.
Seniors John Palo, Alex Puhl and Selby Warren won the Student Managed Investment Fund Consortium, held Oct. 1 and 2, and shared a $1,000 prize. Seniors Parker Mabbett and Gabe Victoria and junior Teddie Hember placed fourth. The field included Princeton, Rice, the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan.
This year’s exercise asked teams to analyze Micron Technology, evaluating the chipmaker’s financial performance and competitive position using financial ratios, valuation models and other measures, and to account for macroeconomic and industry conditions alongside company-specific factors.
To enter, the six students worked in two teams on comprehensive investment plans applying valuation techniques and risk management principles.
“They began work before the fall semester started and the results speak for themselves,” said Sam Sacco, a senior lecturer in Salve’s Jean and David W. Wallace Department of Business and Economics, who leads the university’s participation and advises its student Investment Club.
Warren, who is from Toronto, said the school’s size works in its favor. “At Salve, we are the underdogs in most fights,” he said. “We may not have the size that other schools have in terms of the student population. But what we lack in size we make up for in relentlessness and work ethic.”
Salve teams have finished in the top 10 percent every year since the university began competing in 2019. The trip is funded by the Andrea and Theodore Giletti Fund for Experiential Learning.
President Kelli Armstrong credited both the students and faculty mentors like Sacco.
