Home

thesis-instructions

13 min read

Thesis Case: Walmart, Inc. (NYSE: $WMT)

February 11, 2026

Rodrigo Fenton Ontanon rodrigo.fenton@itam.mx Department of Business Administration, ITAM

Preliminary: Important Dates for Your Consideration

This document contains only the Case guidelines for preparing the written thesis work. It is each student’s responsibility to complete the administrative procedures with the Registrar’s Office, Academic Records, and Thesis Center to complete the degree process and be eligible to present the professional examination.

These procedures, by prior agreement with ITAM authorities, have the following deadlines:

  • March 17, 2026: Deadline to request the Certificate of Studies.
  • April 21, 2026 by 6:00 PM: Last day to complete Phase 2.
  • April 29, 2026 by 5:00 PM: Last day to complete Phase 3.

Please note that you must submit photos, payments, etc. well in advance. Contact the Registrar’s Office about your case, since (especially for joint program students) Phase 2 and Phase 3 items need to be coordinated. This written work is independent of the social service accreditation, certificate of studies, etc.

  • Submit the first version before March 24, end of day in electronic format to Alma Rosa Lee and Rodrigo Fenton Ontanon. This first version will be sent to your examiners.
  • The first Q&A session is Monday, February 16, 2026 at 8:00 PM via Zoom: https://itam.zoom.us/my/rfenton.itam (the February 12 date is incorrect, please disregard it).
  • The examiners will review your work and determine by April 15, 2026:
    1. Which students have satisfactory and sufficient work to proceed to the professional examination (with or without comments).
    2. Comments and feedback on your Cases with proposed changes if the review is satisfactory.
  • Submit the final version before April 21 by 5:00 PM in physical and electronic format to Alma Rosa Lee and Rodrigo Fenton Ontanon. You will be examined based on this version. I recommend taking advantage of the campus trip to submit all your paperwork before the Phase 3 deadline.
  • Professional examinations are planned for May.

1. Purpose and Central Deliverable

The purpose of this Case is for the student to demonstrate the ability to conduct a complete, rigorous, and professional investment analysis, which will be evaluated both in the written work and the Professional Examination.

The central component of the deliverables is an Investment Memorandum prepared to the highest standards, at a level compatible with the evaluation of professional investors both nationally and internationally. To ensure that scope, the document must be written in English, including any derived materials (e.g., presentations and executive summaries). Section 6. Format and Deliverable Guidelines specifies the submissions, formats, and required backup files in detail.

2. Scope of Analysis and Permitted Sources

The analysis should be prepared from the perspective of an independent financial analyst — a professional who acts with objectivity and without conflicts of interest, whose credibility is based on technical quality, soundness of assumptions, and consistency of the argumentation presented.

The analysis should refer to Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT), the multinational parent company headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, and not its Mexican subsidiary. The investment currency shall be the US dollar (USD). The analyst’s perspective should be that of a professional advising a US-based fund or investor who needs to support their decision with a valuation as of the Case delivery date (April 21). For timeliness and consistency purposes, the student should consider the most recently published information from the issuer; notably, Walmart reports its Q4-2026 on February 19.

The analysis should be based on public information, defined as information that is openly available and verifiable (e.g., annual and quarterly reports, 10-K/10-Q, investor presentations and information, official press releases, transcripts and public recordings of earnings calls, market data and statistics from recognized sources). For example, listening to or using the content of a public earnings call is part of the public information set.

Therefore, the use of private reports (i.e., research reports restricted by subscription or distributed to clients) to determine your opinion in the memorandum is not permitted. The model, valuation, and recommendation must be the student’s own work product.

3. Standards and Minimum Methodology

In terms of depth and quality, the memorandum should be aligned with the technical concepts and professional judgment necessary to support an investment recommendation. The recommendation must be fully supported by market, financial, and quantitative analysis. As a minimum reference, the following should be used: Koller, Tim, et al., Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies (Wiley Finance), 6th Edition. Lower levels of analysis are not considered acceptable.

The minimum methodological requirements should follow common professional practices. At a minimum, follow the Finance guidelines (Equity Research Report Essentials), with an adaptation regarding the Valuation section: five to seven valuation tools should be used, with a minimum weight of 10% per method in the final valuation. During the Professional Examination, you may be asked why certain tools were discarded and why the ones used were chosen.

3.1 Selection of Valuation Models

The written work and final presentation must include a “football field” with the estimated value ranges for each valuation method used, so that results can be compared and, where applicable, the emphases or biases derived from methodological selection can be understood (e.g., the relative weight assigned to each approach). To facilitate this reading, a table of method families (balance-sheet based, multiples, DCF, value creation, real options, etc.) is included below as a guide for classifying your tools.

The objective is for evaluators to quickly identify whether different relevant viewpoints were considered — or not — in the final valuation. In this context, consider the following:

  • Multiples: using multiple multiples (e.g., EV/EBITDA, P/E, EV/Sales, etc.) does not count as distinct methods; for purposes of this Case, it is considered a single tool within the “multiples” family.
  • Market value: the observed market value (i.e., “copying the stock price”) is not considered a valuation method for this Case. It may be included only as a reference or contrast point, but not as the basis for the conclusion.
  • Rationale and justification: it is the student’s responsibility to understand and explain the rationale for each chosen method, its key assumptions, and why it is appropriate for the case. If alternative methods beyond those commonly known and used in professional practice are proposed, they must be clearly defined, their logic, assumptions, and conditions of application explained, and their value to the analysis justified.

4. Work Principles and Analyst Judgment

The student’s ability to use their tools with professional judgment will be evaluated, including making appropriate methodological decisions. Specifically, when there is a choice between using an available data point (e.g., via Bloomberg) or estimating it directly (e.g., via a regression to calculate beta), the student must explain and justify the choice made.

The use of financial information platforms available at ITAM (Bloomberg, Capital IQ, and LSEG Workspace) is permitted and can be valuable for obtaining data and references. However, their use must be justified: the student should indicate what information is obtained from these sources, why it is appropriate to do so, and in which cases it is preferable to calculate or estimate their parameters to ensure consistency, comprehension, and traceability of the analysis.

Similarly, not all calculations are expected to be done from scratch. A high-quality work balances efficient use of sources and tools with proprietary estimates when they add rigor, transparency, and control over assumptions.

5. Additional Formal Requirements for the Written Report

  1. Length: the report shall have a maximum length of 50 letter-size pages. Appendices without limit may be included, which do not count toward the 50 pages.
  2. Assumptions visualization: The report should include a page synthesizing the main model assumptions in their historical and prospective dimensions. It is not essential to use a fixed period (e.g., 2021-2036); however, the visualization is expected to include at least five historical years and the entire projection horizon used in the analysis. A continuous graph (not just tables) showing the evolution of variables such as interest rates, risk premium, growth rates, margin assumptions, and comparable multiples, among others, is expected. This guideline is a continuation of the request made since Spring 2025.
  3. Originality: the report must be an original work by the student, prepared specifically to serve as a thesis Case for the Bachelor’s in Financial Management program (ITAM).
  4. Expected memorandum standard: a complete investment memorandum relies on original tables and graphs, prepared specifically to support the analysis and recommendation (e.g., a screenshot of a 10-K is not professionally acceptable). A clear, concise, objective, and properly researched document is expected, with analysis, projections, valuations, and recommendations consistent with each other. It should also include sufficient information for the reader to evaluate and challenge the valuation, and explicitly present the main risks and critical assumptions of the company.

6. Format and Deliverable Guidelines

  • The first version of your work must be submitted on the date indicated above in PDF; it may be prepared in any word processor, as long as the deliverable is PDF.
  • The final version must comply with all requirements from the Thesis Center, which are included for comparative but not limiting purposes below. IT IS THE STUDENT’S RESPONSIBILITY TO ENSURE DOCUMENTS COMPLY WITH THE FORMAT REQUIRED BY ITAM. Professor Fernando Perez programmed a LaTeX template that passes the Thesis Center’s tests, data included below.

The following must be submitted in the final delivery:

I. Paper Copy for ITAM and Examiners

Four (4) color-printed spiral-bound copies of the written work. One copy is for the library, the other three for your examiners.

II. Electronic Copy and Replication Files for Examiners

One USB storage device per student with the written work, containing all Word, PDF, Excel, Stata, R, Matlab files and generally the programming routines with the valuation/forecast model, all without any protection (locks or passwords) so they can be fully reviewed, also including any other analytical or quantitative model used to develop or support the investment memorandum.

6.1 Document Format

Professor Fernando Perez has prepared the following Overleaf link for LaTeX: https://www.overleaf.com/read/yvnkbphcdvfk

The link formats comply with the following Thesis Center guidelines, which are your responsibility to review:

  1. Font size 12, Times Arial, double spacing (24 lines per page).
  2. Margins: top: 2.5 cm; bottom: 2.5 cm; left: 3.5 cm; right: 2.5 cm.
  3. All pages (except the cover) must be numbered consecutively, placing the number in the lower right corner (including appendix and reference pages).
  4. Seven-space indentation at the beginning of each paragraph.
  5. All figures and tables must be numbered with corresponding titles centered below, indicating the information source where applicable.
  6. All appendices must be numbered and referenced in the text.
  7. All equations must be numbered at the far right, considering chapter and equation number (e.g., 2.3 refers to chapter two, equation three).
  8. All section headings must be numbered with Arabic numerals in bold uppercase (e.g., 1. INTRODUCTION).
  9. Subsections must be identified with the section and subsection numbers in bold lowercase (e.g., 1.1 Background and Problem Statement), with a maximum of two levels. For a third level, no numbering, only bold.
  10. All section and subsection titles must be left-aligned.
  11. All abbreviations or symbols must be defined on first mention.
  12. Footnotes should be suppressed. If strictly necessary, they must be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and placed at the bottom of the page where mentioned, separated from the main text by a line.
  13. References must be at the end of the work, alphabetically ordered.
  14. To identify references in the text, write in parentheses: author name, year, and page number(s) (e.g., Kotler, 1991, p.7).
  15. When there are two authors, both last names are mentioned (Copeland and Weston, 1989).
  16. When there are three or more authors, only the first is mentioned followed by et al. (Perez Lizaur, et al., 1982, pp. 7-14).

6.2 Reference Format

If the library submission is done in LaTeX, adding this to the preamble is sufficient:

\usepackage[natbibapa]{apacite}
\bibliographystyle{apacite}

As in this Overleaf link: https://www.overleaf.com/read/yvnkbphcdvfk

The PDF work in the first submission must contain a bibliography, but it does not require any specific format. ITAM regulations state that submitting work without sources is grounds for expulsion, so be very careful with this.

6.3 Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a support tool and cannot be considered the author of the content it generates, however plausible it may seem. Furthermore, its responses may lack traceability (they do not always include the sources used) and AI does not assume responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of the information.

Therefore, any use of AI in this work should be treated as opinion or personal communication. If AI-derived content is incorporated, the student must include (i) the exact text of the query (prompt) and (ii) the fragment of the response that was used, clearly indicating how it was integrated into the analysis.

For example: if a statement comes from Koller, it must be cited as such (“Koller argues…”). If a statement comes from ChatGPT or another AI tool, it must be explicitly indicated as such (“ChatGPT suggests…”). This distinction is essential: attributing a statement to an academic or professional source is not equivalent to attributing it to an AI tool.

6.4 Cover and First Page Format

The Overleaf link content is sufficient. The first page, although unnumbered, must contain the work summary in Spanish. https://www.overleaf.com/read/yvnkbphcdvfk

The LaTeX template prepared by Professor Perez reduces risks with the Thesis Center. What you write produces the PDF that can be consulted at the same link.

7. Some Very Relevant Final Considerations

Teamwork is permitted, as long as the Case is submitted individually. In fact, teamwork is usually an excellent strategy for enriching the analysis. The important thing is that collaboration goes beyond “dividing tasks”: the written work and defense are individual, and each student must understand and be able to support everything they present.

The objective of this Case is for your last experience at ITAM to be formative and positive. If you work in teams, ensure that the writing and analysis development are each student’s own, avoiding significant textual similarities (the Thesis Center uses tools to detect similarities). Also, make sure you master the concepts, assumptions, and results included in your Case.

The examiners will cast a vote to determine whether the work merits presenting the Professional Examination. The vote outcome should be known by April 15; please be attentive to dedicate sufficient time to corrections, as the period between feedback and Phase 3 tends to be extremely limited.

Students are expected to submit complete work from the first round (even if adjustments and improvements are subsequently made). This allows more useful feedback and smoother progress toward the final version. For this reason, incomplete work will not be accepted at the first submission deadline (March 24).

At any time before the Professional Examination, the student may withdraw from the process, even if payment has already been made. No official certificate of participation will be issued until the Examination is conducted and the Record is signed.

Finally, regarding resource access: it is not necessary to submit the thesis form in person; the computer equipment use form (signed by the professor) will be used. To access Capital IQ from home (~15 licenses), contact Silvia Rios. If you attend the Bloomberg Room, you will have guaranteed access to Bloomberg and Capital IQ (16 licenses each).

Graph View