My Core Capstone experience: Best Presenting Team Awarded!
Hi everyone!
December has arrived and I´m approaching halfway on my SMF journey! Like I've shared in my previous posts, this semester has been truly incredible, from networking with top alumni currently working at firms like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, EY, etc., being selected as part of the SMF Student Council, to traveling to Las Vegas to represent Fisher College of Business at Prospanica, the largest conference for Latino professionals in the USA!
Core Capstone Project
This week marks a new addition to my journey here at Fisher—the much-anticipated presentation of the Core Capstone final project. Every year in the SMF program, as a required course in Session 2, students must choose an S&P 500 company for a deep financial analysis, depending on their interest in Investment Banking (with Prof. Royce West) or Corporate Finance (with Prof. Pinteris).
Together with my friends, Adam Kadro, Durgesh Balla, Mingzhu Jin, and Vivi Lo, we opted for the corporate finance path. In a nutshell, our analysis involves gathering the financial statements of the chosen company, in our case, the sweet General Mills, creating pro formas, and subsequently a DCF Model. The ultimate goal is to calculate a value per share and assess, in comparison to the current market price, whether our company is overvalued or undervalued. Finally, based on the consolidations, conduct a capital structure analysis, utilizing tools such as flexibility analysis and cash flow analysis, to determine the company's equity/debt composition, description of the dividend payout policy, credit rating, borrowing power, among other factors.
Our time to shine!
It's been two months of diligent work, refining each draft to ensure a polished presentation until the day of the big reveal arrived! All the groups at Gerlach Hall, with diverse companies from Phillip Morris to Chipotle to Salesforce, all competing to be the top team. I must say, all presentations were of high caliber, with notable individual contributions like those from Zach Bailar and Dhairya Patel. However, if this project is about anything, it's about "telling a story," and that's exactly what our team did, earning us the title of the "Best Presenting Group 🏆”. We presented the financial analyses, yes, but we also immersed the audience in the sweet vibe of our red-and-blue company logo with a heart and the cereals that grace American breakfast tables, using Cheerios as our secret weapon.
And thus, another chapter concludes on this blog, where, as always, beyond the results, I aim to "tell a story"—in this case, the story of my life as an international student at The Ohio State University.
Vacation time is approaching! It's high time for a break—three weeks of reflection, relaxation, and preparation for the next and final semester, which, I can already tell you, will be filled with new emotions and experiences. Stay tuned for upcoming posts where I'll talk about my MBA Case Study Competition, job offers, and more conferences!
Stefano Mejia
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefano-mejia/)
