Ace Slide Making

Most analysts spend their first months at any serious finance role discovering that the work of being right is not the same as the work of being read. You can have the cleanest model and the sharpest insight, and if your slide makes the partner squint, you lose. PMC operates in the same universe. We are an advice business — sometimes with little skin in the game — which means we rely almost entirely on our influencing power. The slide is the instrument.

Thirty minutes that earn back hundreds of hours over the course of a PMC career, and a few habits that quietly separate members who get ahead from those who do not.

Why care?

Slides are not decoration. For PMC's audience — fellow members, senior reviewers, professors, future managers — the slide is the message. Three reasons make the craft non-negotiable.

The eight-step roadmap

The full PMC slide-making process is eight steps, and they are sequential. Skip an early step and the later ones cannot recover the slide. The roadmap divides naturally into two halves: a story half (what are you saying, to whom, and why should they care) and an execution half (how does the slide carry that story without getting in the way).

The next four sections walk each pair of steps in detail.

Step 1 — Dress up to the occasion

Not every slide does the same job, and the right style depends on the job. Three styles sit on a spectrum from catchiness at one end to information at the other.

Steps 2–4 — Curate the story

A great story goes a long way, and three questions force you into one.

Steps 5–7 — Convey the message

A great story without a good supporting slide is a car without wheels. Three principles keep the slide out of the story's way.

Step 8 — Do not settle for average

Making great slides is not a one-stop deal. It is a process you must be willing to undertake. Five tips compress decades of practical experience.

In practice — seven before-and-after case studies

Theory only goes so far. The seven examples below are real PMC slides where the original version had specific, named problems, and the improved version fixed them. The same slide; two different versions; one is in the deck.

Case 1 — The Kering debt schedule (chart formatting)

The slide was meant to show Kering's projected deleveraging path through 2027.

The original chart was an Excel default. Y-axis labelled in raw thousands (0, 1000, 2000, … 9000). No data labels on any bar. All ten bars in the same dark colour, so the eye could not tell which years were actuals and which were forecasts. No headline insight, no annotation, no source.

The improved version redesigned the same data in Think-cell:

• Data labels on every bar — 2.0, 7.4, 6.5, 5.0, 7.9, 7.5, 6.8, 5.9, 4.9, 3.8 — in € billions
• Forecast years (2024–2027) in a lighter shade so the actuals/projections split is visible without reading the legend
• A −49% annotation arrow connecting 2023 to 2027, making the headline insight self-evident at a glance
• Tighter axis range, no gridlines, cleaner typography

Case 2 — The Federal Funds Effective Rate (chart formatting)

A long time-series of the Fed Funds rate from 2000 to today.

The original chart had monthly date labels on the x-axis (1/1/00, 12/1/00, 11/1/01, …) — 280 ticks crammed into the space. Generic title "Federal Funds Effective Rate." No annotations identifying historical events. No callouts on the peaks.

The improved version told the same story differently:

• Year labels on the x-axis (2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020) instead of monthly ticks
• Annotation labels on the major peaks: Financial crisis at 5.02%, COVID crisis at the dip, … crisis? at the recent 5.33% peak
• Y-axis with percent formatting (0%, 1%, 2% … 7%) instead of raw decimals
• A clear sub-headline: the chart now tells a story instead of just plotting data

Case 3 — Hologic at PMC's Portfolio

A slide that needed to communicate why one of the portfolio's holdings (Hologic, ticker HOLX) was underperforming.

The original had four named problems:

1. No graph readability — the price line was small, dates rotated, scale unclear
2. Too texty — three long bullet paragraphs at the bottom of the slide
3. Overall flow disturbed — the eye couldn't tell where to start reading
4. Title does not represent the slide — title said "Original First Glance," which describes the document, not the message

The improved version rebuilt around the message:

• New title: "Hologic at PMC's Portfolio"
• New sub-headline: "Since joining the portfolio on November 2022, Hologic had a negative return of 4%" — the conclusion, stated upfront
• A clean stock-price chart from Jan-22 to Oct-23 with three numbered key moments overlaid:
  1. Purchase of 150 shares at $73.26 — November 18, 2022 (~1% portfolio weight)
  2. All-time high at $87.88 — May 2, 2023 (+20% upside)
  3. Holding 150 shares at $70.21 — October 4, 2023 (~1% weight)
• A −4% arrow tracing the entry-to-current path
• A "Why underperforming?" panel summarising the diagnosis in three bullets:
  • Overreliance on COVID and its aftermath in 2021
  • Unpredictable revenue afterwards
  • Undermanagement by PMC

Case 4 — Product portfolio comparison (Gucci vs Louis Vuitton)

A slide comparing the bag collections of Gucci and Louis Vuitton across 2021, 2022, and 2023.

The original had named problems even though the concept was right:

• Conceptually good (the comparison structure works)
• Different aspect ratios of pictures — three Gucci bags at different sizes, three LV bags at different sizes, comparison broken
• Unbalanced white space — content drifted across the slide
• Bullet points not needed — the visual comparison itself was the argument; the text was redundant
• Small pictures — the actual evidence (the bags) was hard to see

The improved version kept the structure and fixed the execution:

• Title became: "Unlike Louis Vuitton, Gucci fails to maintain a coherent style throughout time, hindering its customer retention" — argument front and centre
• Six images, all the same aspect ratio, sized to fill the comparison grid
• Brand logos in the left column for visual anchors
• Bullet points removed
• A discreet footnote: "Ideally, photos would have no background and purses would be easily comparable. White space could be stretched a bit too thin"

The footnote is itself a teaching moment. The improved slide is honest about its remaining compromises.

Case 5 — Portfolio fit (Deere)

A slide arguing why Deere should remain in the portfolio.

The original had three diagnosed problems:

• Sources not there — financial claims with no citation
• White space unbalanced — the four catalyst boxes were uneven
• Rounded bullet points — visually noisy and inconsistent with PMC standards (square bullets are the convention)

The improved version kept the four-catalyst structure but tightened every box:

The improved slide also added a footnote source — Bloomberg, TTM Yield — closing the citation gap that was the first named problem.

Case 6 — Financial Analysis (Apple)

A standard PMC financial-analysis slide: full P&L table on the left, margin evolution chart on the right, commentary at the bottom.

The original had subtle but real problems:

• The margins chart was a line chart with three lines on top of each other — hard to read
• The chart axis values were redundant with the table
• Commentary was a paragraph rather than structured insight

The improved version:

• The margins chart became a clustered bar chart with the three margin lines as bars per year — visually cleaner, easier to compare
• Headers and values rounded consistently (one decimal place), with red parentheses for negative growth and green for positive
• Commentary structured as: "Steady evolution amid:" — three bullets — decline in product sales, currency weakness, increase in services' sales (higher margins)
• The 2023 column highlighted with a dashed border to mark "this is the column the slide is about"
• New title: "Despite the sluggish results in FY2023, Apple still managed to beat PMC's expectations"

The chart improvement is the most teachable moment: when three series have similar magnitudes and similar shapes, bars are easier to compare than lines. Lines work when one series clearly dominates or when the time-series is long enough that line continuity matters.

Case 7 — Sales Breakdown (AAR Corp)

A slide breaking down AAR's revenue by segment and geography.

The original had:

• A pie chart with six segments, two of which were tiny (Integrated Solutions 3.01%, Expeditionary Services −4.20%, Inter-segment Sales unlabelled)
• A stacked bar chart with three regions, but the values printed inside the bars were the totals, not the segment values
• Bullet point commentary in two long blocks

The improved version:

• Pie chart simplified to three meaningful segments (Parts Supply 42%, Repair & Engineering 31%, Aviation Services 28%) — the small sub-3% segments grouped or dropped from the visual
• Stacked bar chart with each region's value labelled inside its segment (1.6/0.3/0.1, 1.4/0.2/0.1, 1.4/0.2/0.2, 1.5/0.3/0.2, 1.7/0.4/0.2 in $bn)
• A +16% annotation arrow on the 2023→2024 totals
• Bullets compressed to three crisp insights per panel
• Footnote at the bottom explaining the 2023 segment split: "In 2023, the company decided to split the «Aviation Services» sector into three separate segments: Parts Supply, Repair & Engineering and Integrated solutions for transparency."
• Source citation: Market Screener AAR Corp

Think-cell — the productivity multiplier

Once the principles are clear, the bottleneck becomes execution speed. Think-cell is the PowerPoint and Excel add-in that does for slides what a templated DCF does for valuation — collapses the time from idea to finished artefact, while raising the quality floor. It is the standard tool in management consulting and a unique time-saver for slide making and modelling.

The toolkit lives in two main groups inside Think-cell's PowerPoint ribbon.

Elements — the chart library

Sixteen chart types you can drop into a slide and bind to live data:

• Stacked Column / Bar — the default for showing parts-of-a-whole over time
• 100% Column / Bar — same, but normalised to relative shares
• Clustered Column / Bar — for comparing categories side by side
• Build-Up Waterfall / Build-Down Waterfall — the consultant favourite for showing additive or subtractive walks
• Mekko (% Axis) — width and height both encode information
• Combination — bars and lines on the same chart
• Line / Profile — time series and discrete profiles
• Stacked Area / 100% Area — the area equivalents of stacked bars
• Mekko (Unit Axis) — Mekko with absolute units
• Pie and Doughnut — categorical share
• Scatter and Bubble — two- and three-dimension correlations
• Gantt / Timeline — project schedules and event timelines

Every chart type is tied to a small Excel data table you edit in place — change a number and the chart updates instantly, with consistent formatting.

Layout — the alignment toolkit

Twenty layout tools that solve the "manually nudging shapes for fifteen minutes" problem. Once you know them, you stop touching the mouse for layout work entirely.

Think-cell layout toolkit. Tools 7–9 (Same Width / Same Height / Same Size) and 13–18 (the alignment family) are the most-used in practice — they are the difference between a slide that looks placed and a slide that looks designed.

And much more beyond these — agendas, libraries, slide workbooks, automated tables of contents, presentation quality checks. The full list is for you to discover; the right way to learn Think-cell is to use it on real slides, not to read the manual front-to-back.

Kaizen your way — the best-practice checklist

The Japanese principle of Kaizen — continuous improvement — is the right mindset for slide-making. Each iteration sharpens the slide a little more. The compounding effect over many revisions is what separates a good slide from a great one.

Nine practices that, applied consistently, hold the bar.

Anything familiar?

These principles are not theoretical. They show up in every PMC pitch the club has produced — from the cover slides through the deepest analysis pages. Recent decks that exemplify the standard:

• Aston Martin — Group 27 TXD, 9 March 2024, Financial Statement Analysis Spring 2024
• Guna Fibres — Spring 2024, 12 March 2024, Nova SBE Applied Corporate Finance
• MoGen Inc. — Spring 2024, 9 April 2024, Nova SBE Applied Corporate Finance
• Pernod Ricard — Group 27 TXD, 3 November 2024, Spring 2024
• Costco — Group 27 TXD, 29 February 2024
• Ardagh Metal Packaging — Investment Committee Paper, Private Equity Group 12, 3 November 2024

The principles are the same in each. Strong descriptive titles. Consistent layout. Clean chart formatting. Genuine white space. A clear story curated before any pixels were placed. Every member who has produced a deck in PMC has internalised some version of this checklist — and the decks that have circulated outside the club, to recruiters and to industry, are the proof that the bar is real.