I recently cleared my CFA Level 1 and have been applying for equity research jobs. In this process, I also created an equity research report and excel model to share with potential employers to help me in the application process.
After meeting a few fund managers, I have gotten good feedback on my report. Strong technical, reasoning, and research skills is what most of the feedback is centred around. However, I recently came across a fund manager who was earlier working in M&As and LBOs. He said that in his experience a dcf is not a useful valuation tool. It embeds to much of the controller's bias, has unrealistic assumptions, and is time consuming. He recommended using valuation comps, and only conducting a dcf when a company's valuation comps show a severe undervaluation (which is of course rare).
In your opinion - should I stick to mastering the dcf or focus on using comps?