A team of students from WU Vienna University of Economics and Business has won the Austrian finals of this year’s CFA Research Challenge, achieving a remarkable success: for the third time in a row, the national title goes to WU. With this hat trick, WU Vienna underscores its leading role in financial education. The winning team will now represent CFA Society Austria in the sub-regional competition at the European level.

The CFA Research Challenge is an international student competition initiated by the CFA Institute (a leading international professional association of financial analysts). More than 7,000 students from over 1,100 universities worldwide participated in the 2025–2026 academic year. In the competition, the teams have to analyze a publicly traded company based on publicly available information and a management interview, prepare a professional stock analysis report with a comprehensive company valuation and a clear investment recommendation, and present their results to a jury of seasoned financial practitioners.

The competition is held on several levels. The national finals are followed by the sub-regional competition (Western Europe), then the EMEA semi-finals (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) and EMEA finals, and then the global finals.

Delivering an award-winning company analysis on EVN

In this year’s Austrian competition, the students analyzed the publicly listed energy and infrastructure company EVN AG. The jury assessed the students’ work based on the quality of the written report, the methodological approach used for deriving the company valuation, the consistency of the reasoning behind the investment recommendation, and the professionalism of the presentation.