2025 Sohn San Francisco: Cal vs. Stanford – Avian Flu Winner Vs Project Management Firm Wins With AI

The 2025 Sohn San Francisco Conference once again featured "The Big Pitch - Cal vs. Stanford," a student stock pitch competition. This year’s event was noteworthy, following the success of last year's UC Berkeley team, whose short pitch on Clear Secure preceded a 24% single-day drop in shares just two weeks later, generating 26% of alpha over the subsequent 12 months. Continuing the tradition, this year's presentations included a short idea presented by Eric Li, a third-year economics student, and Luca Cifolelli, a third-year studying economics and political science at UC Berkeley. Their thesis targets a specialty food company, arguing that the firm’s historical pricing power is non-sustainable, having been artificially inflated by temporary macro conditions, setting the stage for strong volume and margin contraction as the market normalizes.

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Cal: The Case Against A Specialty Food Leader

The core of the Berkeley pitch centered on a specialty food company specializing primarily in the pasture-raised egg segment, a market valued at $10 billion. Shell eggs account for 96% of the company's revenue, with the remaining 4% derived from butter. Historically, this company has commanded a significant premium, pricing its dozen at $9.50 on average, substantially higher than the segment average selling price (ASP) of $7.33 for other pasture-raised eggs. The short thesis posits that this perceived strength in pricing power is fundamentally unstable and relies heavily on a now-receding external supply shock.