A return realized

By using the skills he sharpened in his accounting classes and trusting his instincts, Yan Rodgers ’25 made an investment that has already paid off for him — and University of Redlands.

For his senior project, Rodgers researched investment opportunities and analyzed financial statements to learn how to forecast and evaluate companies. This was something he already enjoyed doing on his own; Rodgers is an Army veteran who worked for a defense contractor and has years of experience investing in companies that “play on my strengths,” he said. “And what are my strengths? Military defense contracting and tech. Instead of trying to reimagine the wheel, I stick to aerospace and defense and really get an idea of what’s going on.”

When he discovered Rocket Lab Corporation, a publicly traded aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider, it seemed right up his alley. But Rodgers doesn’t just dive headfirst into an investment opportunity. First, he conducts meticulous research to “get to the meat and potatoes” of a company and its worth.

While looking into Rocket Lab, he found that they were “actually doing what needed to get done to get satellites into space,” Rodgers said. “If you can’t get the actual satellite into space, you just have a giant paperweight.” They had successfully completed over 50 launches, and when he “looked under the hood,” Rodgers found that many objects in space had “a Rocket Lab logo on it. I thought, why is this not talked about more? These guys are doing something different. They are innovative and going out there and really testing their mettle.”

Always wanting to take a chance on an underdog, Rodgers decided to buy Rocket Lab stock at around $4-$5 a share. A year later, it’s now worth more than 10 times that, and Rocket Lab is preparing to launch its Neutron rocket, a competitor to SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

“The best is yet to come,” Rodgers said. “We’re still far away from seeing what this company can do.”

As more telecommunications businesses launch space components, keeping people on Earth connected in even the most remote locations, this “solidifies” Rodgers’ belief that “everything is going to go up in space at some point,” he said.

Rodgers continues to look for similar companies to invest in, following his guiding principles. “My dad used to tell me when I first started investing, ‘Yan, you’re just lucky,’’’ Rodgers said. “I used to hate that. I don’t want to rely on luck. I like relying on concrete evidence to back my thesis. Kudos to my dad who drove me to want to be able to articulate why I’m making these decisions.”

He also credits University of Redlands’ Accounting Department with helping him better understand the investing world and recently donated $10,000 of his stock market earnings to the program.

“I like to lead by example and wanted to show that school projects can end up leading to something cool like this,” Rodgers said.

Now a staff level auditor for the financial services team at Crowe LLP in Costa Mesa, Rodgers carries with him many lessons he learned at Redlands, and words of advice from Accounting Chair Renee Hall.

“I will never forget how she told me one day, ‘Yan, you can’t just sound exceptional, you have to be exceptional, and want to be exceptional,’” Rodgers said. “I took that personal and haven’t forgotten that conversation.”