Research Analyst

My name is John Vuong, from the Netherlands, and I work at Kempen as a Research Analyst. I started in the summer of 2017 as an intern at the Real Estate Equity Research team. Ever since I have been with the same team growing into my current position. What I like most about my job? The steep learning curve that I have experienced here at Kempen, which is coming from both discussions with colleagues and clients.

What my job involves
My job entails analysing fundamentals of specific real estate stocks and issuing a recommendation (Buy, Neutral or Sell) and 12-month price target. For example, to analyse whether a student housing company would be an attractive investment opportunity, we would make forecasts on the market by looking at supply (how many real estate companies are developing new apartment blocks) and demand (what is the growth in number of domestic/international students). This market research would be combined with company specifics (e.g. what is their unique selling point, how are they positioned amongst peers, how profitable is the business, what is their capacity for growth). Our findings would be published in a report, where we issue a recommendation on the shares of the company.

A typical workday
We start early in the morning before the stock market opens by compiling all relevant news into a daily newsletter for our clients. If one of the companies we cover publishes quarterly or annual results, we would write our take on the results and how it compares to our expectations. After our daily is out, our days differs on the planned activities that day. One day we could be entirely focused on modeling and writing a report, whilst another day we could be on the phone with institutional investors pitching our ideas.

Let me tell you a bit more about a recent project I worked on
Recently I have been working on revamping our financial model for our real estate coverage with the goal to improve our forecast accuracy, whilst keeping it simple and intuitive. Given our coverage of 60+ real estate stocks, it was a nice challenge to standardise our model as much as possible.

A little piece of advice for people thinking of applying for Kempen
Have a clear view on what your motivation for a specific role is and how this fits your long-term ambitions.