Advanced Financial Modeling & Business Valuation Specialist

DETAILED CURRICULUM

Advanced Financial Modelling & Business Valuation Specialist training program has been divided into three levels: Foundation, Advanced & Supporting.

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The foundation level aims to build/refresh a conceptual base in various subject areas related to corporate finance. In addition, the participants receive a crash-course in excel, preparing them for advanced excel/modelling training.

The advanced level comprises of an in-depth dive into PP&A, financial modelling and business valuation and also includes an advanced excel course module.

The supporting level is optional and comprises of comprehensive coverage of subject areas which will add immensely to your financial analysis capabilities and will aid you to become a truly world-class financial analyst

FOUNDATION  LEVEL

Introduction To Corporate Finance
 

This course covers a wide range of fundamental corporate finance concepts. The basic objective is to enable participants to understand the skills they need to develop,  in order to further their careers in corporate finance while working for organisations in the fields of investment banking, equity research, corporate development, private equity, financial planning & analysis and many more.

The course has been developed to impart wide-ranging foundational knowledge about corporate finance subjects. It should be a very valuable primer for those who are new to corporate finance as well as an important refresher for those who have worked in corporate finance roles earlier in their careers.

After attending this course, you will develop a basic but solid understanding of capital markets. The focus will be on understanding the key aspects of investment banking (M&A advisory and underwriting) and an outline of the corporate funding life cycle. You will also get a broad understanding of the business valuation process with special emphasis on understanding the difference between valuing a business using equity and enterprise value multiples and how a business is valued using discounted cash flow.

You will also develop a broad understanding of the steps involved in an acquisition transaction process, how synergies affect the valuations and evaluating an appropriate financing structure for an acquisition. The course will conclude with a thorough introduction to equity & debt financing by outlining various types, understanding the impact of leverage and the role of private equity funds.

Fixed Income Foundations
 

This course has been developed with an objective to assist participants with a broad understanding of bonds & other fixed income securities. Anyone aiming to excel in a financial analysis career should understand how bonds work. Bonds represent one of the most significant ways through which companies around the globe raise debt and fund their businesses. It is therefore essential to build a broad understanding before building on to understand more complex fixed income concepts.

This course begins with covering some key issues i.e. Who issues bonds and what type of investors buy those bonds and the structure of what makes up a bond. We will then aim to understand the concept of credit spreads, the impact of the economic life cycle and yield curves.

In the second half of the course, we will focus first on bond pricing issues by building on an understanding of the time value of money, compound interest concepts, discounting and calculating cash flows. We will then explore the bond price sensitivity issues and will also focus on the duration concept.

Corporate Finance Math Basics
 

Mathematics is a critical skill for any financial analyst. This course has been developed to equip the participants with a refreshed understanding of most critical mathematical formulas and concepts that one needs to master for a successful corporate finance career. The participants will not only attend a lecture but will be provided with hands-on opportunity to practice the concepts they learn in form of quizzes and short tests.

This course is one of the most critical foundational course for developing truly world-class financial modelling & business valuation skills.

We will begin by exploring in detail, the cash flow discounting techniques by understanding: time value of money, discount rates, net present value, annuity & perpetuity concepts. We will then move on to understand and practice a range of mathematical tools for establishing bond value, bond prices and calculating yields.

The second half of the course deals with some key statistical skills and explores weighted average cost of capital (WACC), expected values and measures of dispersion including range, variance & standard deviation.
We will finish with an in-depth review and practice covariance, correlation & regression concepts.

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Excel Crash Course

To be successful as a financial analyst, one has to be master in excel. Learning excel to a professional level needs clarity of functions & concepts as well as practice, and a step by step approach is probably the most effective. This course has been designed to deliver a thorough understanding of some of the most important formulas, functions & shortcuts. This will act as a solid foundation and will not only enable you to start with basic financial modelling but will also equip you to take on advanced excel course.

We will follow a case study methodology and will begin with understanding the layout, structure & format of a piece of financial analysis. We will then work through functions and formulas in a natural way, where we will utilize IF statements, choose function, conditional formatting etc. and a host of other tools which you will need as a financial analyst to build financial models.

Excel skills are one of the most important part of this financial modelling & business valuation specialist program. This course is a MUST for beginners and is a good point to start for intermediate level financial analysts. The participants will attend a lecture and will get the opportunity to get hands-on practice through quizzes, tests and a case study. Once you have completed this course, you will feel way more confident about your ability to go on and learn world-class financial analysis & modelling skills.

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Foundations of Excel Modelling

Financial models, built in excel are one of the most important tools that financial analysts use around the globe to value businesses, investments & projects. Good excel skills are therefore critical to all financial analysts.

This course has been developed with an objective to combine the fundamentals of building financial models with the essential excel functionality. i.e. It is one thing to know excel but a bit of another to know how to effectively use excel for building a world-class financial model. This course therefore, covers a wide range of concepts. The participants will learn the tips & tricks for excel navigation & shortcuts. We will look at how to build additional flexibility into all your financial models, we will cover sensitivity tools like goal seek, data tables, scenario and solver. We will also look at how to audit and quickly find errors in financial models.

This course comprises of lectures, quizzes, test and excel based case study for hands-on practice. This is a foundational level course that will create a solid base for participants to build-on to become world-class financial analysts. The wide range of excel as well as financial modelling concepts that you will learn in this course will be useful throughout your corporate finance careers.

We will begin with an in-depth dive into excel tips & tricks. From there, we will continue to build our understanding of excel formulas & functions with a very detailed look at specialised functionality for financial analysis. Moving on, we will get thoroughly familiar with the techniques & tools needed to forecast under uncertainty and will finish with a detailed look at ways and methods of auditing financial models.

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Fundamentals of Financial Analysis

Financial analysis is critical not only to understand a company's past performance but also to forecast its future prospects. The insight which one can gain through financial analysis can help businesses improve their profitability, cash flow and valuation.

This course is aimed at training participants on how to undertake a comprehensive financial analysis using a wide range of financial ratios. We will look at the ratios to analyse the income statement & profitability, ratios to analyse operating assets and asset utilization. We will also look at the ratio that can help us understand the capital structure. The intent of this analysis should be to make recommendations for a business that wants to improve its operations, its capital structure and asset utilization.

We will use DuPont pyramid of ratios as a basic model for combing various ratios together to produce a more comprehensive view of a business.

The course begins by taking a detailed look at vertical & horizontal income statement analysis, followed by an in-depth dive into balance sheet ratios, cash flow ratios and finally rates of return and profitability analysis

Introduction To Behavioural Finance

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This is an introductory level course which explores how behavioural finance impacts market activity as well as the behaviour of finance professionals. As a financial analyst, it is important to understand how human behaviour like biases and irrationality impact the prices of investment securities.

The fundamental focus of financial modelling & business valuation specialist training program is on objective forms of analysis. However, it is extremely important for a financial analyst to understand how psychological forces impact security prices and markets. This course, therefore, covers a wide range of behavioural finance biases. We will explore the concepts of optimism bias and overconfidence bias. We will then look at a wide range of information processing biases such as hindsight bias, self attribution bias, the representation bias and the confirmation bias. More importantly, we will look at how these biases affect financial decision making.

The course begins with an in-depth look at the biases and errors that affect decision making and then moves on to explore the information processing errors and understanding how decisions are impacted by others. Attending this course will assist participants in their efforts to become more well-rounded financial analysts.

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ADVANCED  LEVEL

Advanced Excel

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Building on the excel crash course, this course has been designed to take your excel skills to the next level. The participants will learn how to combine formulas and functions to make financial analysis & financial models more dynamic.

Advanced excel skills are developed not by merely knowing the specific functions but by mastering the ability to combine these functions. This course aims to assist the participants to develop these skills and become truly world-class financial analysts.

This is an advanced level course and  uses a case study as a basic learning tool. Fundamentally designed for developing excel skills in the context of financial analysis & modelling, this course aims to impart training through covering a wide area of excel skills including formulas, functions, charts, graphs, data tables, lookup functions and all sorts of advanced skills one needs to perform dynamic & world-class financial modelling.

The course includes lectures and hands-on practice with advanced excel usage. The participants will gain the confidence they need to be able to perform truly advanced excel modelling. This will give you deeper insight and add more value to your career as a financial analyst.

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Complete Financial Model in Excel

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Financial modelling is a critical tool that you will need in your careers as financial analysts. It is one of the most desired skills in investment banking, equity research & corporate development. This course uses a case study methodology. The participants will build a financial statements forecast model from scratch. You will learn how to structure the model and how to use best practices. With these best practices, you will build a forecast income statement, forecast balance sheet and a forecast statement of cash flow.

This is an advanced level course which builds on the skills learned at the foundation level and advanced excel skills course. Upon completing this course, the participants will gain much-enhanced confidence to build complex financial models for businesses operating in any industry.

This course comprises of lectures as well as hands-on exercises where the participants will build a financial model from scratch. We will begin by looking at a structured approach to financial modelling followed by learning how to build a forecast income statement, forecast balance sheet and forecast cash flow statement, together with complete supporting schedules.

Modelling for Business Valuation

Business valuation is a core skill needed by all financial analysts. In this course, the participants will be introduced to a wide range of best practice valuation methods followed by an in-depth dive into the subject and hands-on business valuation practice.

Business valuation is subjective and in essence, it is part science and part art. This course has been designed to steer the participants in the right direction to use the most appropriate valuation methods and techniques.
This is an advanced level course and is extremely useful not only for those new to the business valuations but also for the experienced professionals.

The course begins with a focus on clearly establishing the differences between the equity & enterprise value and then builds on with a detailed analysis of three core business valuation techniques i.e. comparable, precedents transactions & DCF analysis. The course concludes with a detailed session on analysis presentation with an aim to equip participants with the world-class presentation skills.

To enhance the learning outcome, this course is structured with a series of lectures as well as exercises and a comprehensive case study, where the participants have to apply the valuation techniques in excel.

FP&A and Cash Flow Forecast Modelling

This course has been designed to further build the financial modelling skills by taking a detailed look at how monthly data is used for forecasting & FP&A purposes. The participants of this course will learn how to build a complete model from scratch using monthly data. The methodology will include creating monthly forecasts for income statement, balance sheet, cash flow as well as supporting schedules and then piece it all together to build a complete model which forecasts rolling monthly data to be used for a host of FP& A objectives.

We will begin with a detailed look at financial modelling best practices and then with a revision of modelling cash flows, we will move on to build a detailed monthly financial statements model.

In this course, our focus will also be on reading into the model i.e. Addressing questions like: does the company need more money? Is it adequately financed? How is it performing? How suitable is the leverage level etc. We will look at beyond just the numbers to identify things which as financial analysts we would want to recommend to the management.

This course also has an enhanced focus on visual presentation tools including charts & graphs so you can make your model look fantastic and communicate the findings of your results in the most effective way.

Scenario & Sensitivity Analysis

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This is one of the most important courses in this program. When we are trying to value a company, we do not expect to arrive at a single valuation figure. Rather, there is a range of values. There are assumptions that we base our model on, and since those assumptions can vary, the resulting valuation can also vary. This course focuses on the ways in which changes in those fundamental assumptions can result in changes in the valuation of a business.

There are two main topic areas covered in this course i.e. scenarios and sensitivity. With scenarios, we will look at how we incorporate possible cases in the model i.e. a base case, a mid case, and an upside case. Whilst with sensitivity, we are going to explore how changes in the values of fundamental assumptions result in the changes in business valuation. For example, if interest rate increase, what is the likely impact on value? We will look at how to link this all up in excel, connecting it with formulas and making it dynamic.

This course combines three key skill-set that you have learned before reaching this course. i.e. excel, financial modelling & business valuation. By completing this course, you will gain further confidence to perform financial modelling and valuation in dynamic and uncertain environments.

Mergers & Acquisitions Modelling

This is a truly advanced course on financial modelling. We will look at how to build an M&A model from scratch. Mergers and acquisitions can be one of the most intimidating types of transactions to model as a financial analyst. These models are usually extremely detailed and complicated. To simplify the things, we are going to break it down together i.e. By first looking at how an M&A transaction actually fits together. Once we have the basic structure understanding in place, we will layer on more complexity and will look at more advanced types of analysis.

We will take an in-depth look at how accretion & dilution analysis is performed, how synergies are recognized and analysed and how value is created or potentially destroyed through an M&A transaction.

M&A models are complicated yet very exciting to build. For performing comprehensive M&A modelling, an analyst needs skills to look at, if the transaction is accretive or dilutive to the shareholders of the acquiring company. The analyst should also be able to evaluate the strategic rationale. i.e. are there synergies in a transaction? To achieve this ability, we will unpack some very interesting concepts in this course. By the end of this course, you will have a fully dynamic and fully linked M&A model that you have built from scratch.

This course covers a wide range of some of the most important financial modelling concepts. We will look at how to build the target model, the acquirer model and then how to combine these two into one. We will use different assumptions to drive the transaction. We will cover concepts like take-over premium, synergies, acquisition costs and the ways a transaction is funded i.e. with cash, shares or a combination of both. We will then fit everything together in a consolidated proforma model where we can finally look at accretion & dilution analysis as well as the impact on the share price from going through this transaction.

Leveraged Buyout Modelling

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Leveraged Buyout or LBO models are one of the most complex models that any financial analyst can expect to build. This course has been designed to show you how to build an LBO model from scratch, step by step.

Upon completing this course, you will be able to analyse the transaction by evaluating factors like the rate of return, how attractive is it for a private investor to buy this business, what are the risks, how does the up-side case look like and how the down-side case looks like. You will also brush-up your presentation skills by incorporating charts & graphs and will learn how to make recommendations about how the deal under consideration should be structured and whether or not it offers an attractive rate of return for the investor.

LBO models can be really complex and intimidating to tackle. This course aims to reduce this complexity by breaking the process down into simple steps. We will start with the traditional 3 statement model and DCF analysis that by now you have done in many courses in this program. We will then layer on top of it, assumptions related to the LBO transaction. We will look at how much debt the company can handle, different tranches of that debt, and how to integrate a revolving line of credit into the financial statements. We will explore how this model looks from an investor's perspective by focusing on the investor's rate of return and associated risks.

This is a hands-on course. In order to fully benefit from this course, the participants will have to build a compete model on their own. Only then you will fully appreciate the fundamental core concepts and techniques you need to master to build an LBO model from scratch.

SUPPORTING (OPTIONAL) LEVEL

Fundamentals of Budgeting & Forecasting

Budgeting & forecasting represents one of the most important skill-set of any financial analyst. Whether you are the one preparing a budget or forecast yourself or you are reviewing someone else's prepared budget and forecast in a financial model, you need to know how the budgets work, how they are made and how to forecast accurately.

In this course, we will show you all the major methods to build budgets, to create forecasts and to compare them to each other. As a financial analyst, you must be able not only to create budgets and forecasts but you must also be able to analyse and evaluate the budgets and forecasts that you work with. Without having such skills, you cannot perform either business valuations or financial modelling.

This course explores how budgeting fits within the overall strategic planning process at an organisation. The course looks at different methods for building budgets, how to get buy-in on those budgets and how to roll-out those budgets across the company. The course also comprehensively covers forecasting techniques like regression analysis and includes practical demonstrations in excel.

We will begin by exploring budgeting within a strategic framework and will then move on to an in-depth dive into learning how to build a robust budgeting process. We will cover in detail, the practical steps to create budgets and will take a detailed look at the forecasting techniques.

The course has good coverage of tracking budget performance with variance analysis and explores in detail the applied budgeting tools and techniques in excel.

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Fundamentals of Business Strategy

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As a financial analyst, it is easy to get stuck in the details of a financial model. Whilst that is extremely important, it is also important to be able to look at the broader strategy of a business to see how the model that we are building or evaluating connects to that company's strategy. Completing this course will help you to be able to connect a company's strategy into the assumptions of the financial model that we build/evaluate.

When we build financial models and make assumptions, we need to tie these assumptions to something. That is why strategic analysis is so important. This course aims to help you connect those dots between those underline drivers which are in the model and the big picture strategy of the business.

This course covers four major areas related to business strategy i.e. Internal analysis, external analysis, current strategies and recommendations. In order to evaluate all four of those, we will also look at some frameworks. We will explore porter's 5 forces, SWOT analysis and PEST analysis.

All these concepts you probably already know of conceptually. However, in this course, we will put these concepts into practice as a financial analyst would use them to evaluate a company and an industry.

One of the most important concepts that this course focuses on, is how to come up with recommendations for the management of a business. As an analyst, if you want to increase your value to an organisation or a client, you need to be able to come up with recommendations and insights. We are also going to look at how to use a balanced scorecard to evaluate strategic alternatives and figure out which ones are the most attractive. We should then be able to take those recommendations and build into our financial model and valuation analysis.

Data Visualization & Dashboards

As a financial analyst, it is critical to be able to produce beautiful presentations & outputs and show the findings of your analysis in a forceful way. So far in this training program, you have learned how to perform financial modelling & valuation. In this course, we will focus on the presentations & outputs and will aim to achieve the ability to present our findings & recommendations in a clear, concise yet forcefully persuasive manner.

This course covers the most advanced and powerful charts, graphs and excel-based visuals that you can create as a financial analyst. This is a hands-on course where we will work in excel together and will create everything step-by-step from scratch.

The course also has comprehensive coverage of the theory that is behind the various visualization techniques. This includes issues such as: how our brain works and how do we get influenced by the things that we see. With the help of this understanding, we can apply the best practices to our financial analysis.

The course then moves on to excel to show you how to build world-class visualization including most powerful charts & graphs including gauge charts, bullet charts, waterfall charts and how to combine these together into a dashboard that has very clear messages and takeaways for our users.

Completing this course will help you immensely to acquire all-around skills needed to claim yourself a world-class financial analyst. The presentation & data visualization skills that you will gain through this course will be invaluable to your career growth and you will be able to stand out and shine as an analyst.

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PowerPoint & Pitchbooks

As a financial analyst, it is absolutely critical to be good at making presentations. This packed course has been designed to train the participants on how to make great visuals, how to tell a story and how to make it easy for the users to follow the presentation and conclusions.

This course gets real technical and requires the trainees to work in PowerPoint whilst focusing on minute details such as alignment, structure & design, thus enabling them to create world-class presentations. As a learning tool, this course uses the entire process of creating a pitchbook using PowerPoint. We will explore how to keep the presentation engaging and how to move the user along, guiding to the conclusion that the presentation aims for.

The course also stresses aesthetics and comprehensively covers the skills one needs to make the presentations look fantastic, consistent and super professional. We will also learn shortcuts and functions which would help us navigate PowerPoint more efficiently

Fundamentals of Performance Management

Performance Management is a vast subject area. The aim of this course is to create an understanding of the most crucial fundamental concepts and models to add to your capabilities as a financial analyst.

This is a concise sandwiched course created especially to be part of the advanced financial modelling & business valuation training program. For a comprehensive coverage of performance management as a separate subject, at ACS, we have specialized courses available.

This course begins with a refresher overview of strategic planning & control process and then moves on to explore the impact of risk and uncertainty on organisational performance. We will then look at how performance measurement systems are designed and how they work. We will also take a detailed look at some of the methods, tools and models for measuring strategic performance and will explore how to evaluate performance. The course concludes by exploring the causes of corporate failure and the means and methods of predicting and preventing it.

As a financial analyst, it is crucial that you have very strong performance management skills. That is the primary reason why this course has been created and made a part of the optional section of the advanced financial modelling & business valuation specialist training program. The aim is essentially to provide a useful refresher to those who have studied performance management or have worked in such roles in past as well as provide a fundamental base to those who are new to the performance management concepts.

For a comprehensive study/training on the subject, you are strongly encouraged to take one of our specialized courses on performance management.

Financial Modelling Using VBA

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Visual basic for applications or VBA is a computer programming language that allows for the creation of user-defined functions and the automation of specific computer processes and calculations. Users do not have to buy a copy of visual basic professional because visual basic for applications is a standard feature of Microsoft Office products. Visual basic for applications (VBA) allows users additional customization beyond what is normally available in Microsoft Office products, such as excel, access, word and powerpoint.

Excel formulas can become very long and difficult to understand and/or audit. In VBA, formulas can be broken down into shorter formulas with easy to audit descriptive names. VBA makes it much easier to quickly update formulas and ensure that cells aren't inadvertently damaged in the updating process. Also, VBA models require less documentation in order to understand the flow of the model.

This is a comprehensive training course which begins with a detailed introduction to VBA for financial modelling in excel. The course then runs through the design, building & running of VBA sub-procedures in much detail with an aim to enable participants to write VBA code for a sub-procedure; differentiate VBA objects, properties, & methods; call sub-procedures when needed and outlines the importance of declaring variables in procedures.

We will learn how to create customized excel functions. i.e. How to effectively utilize functions that are unique to VBA such as message boxes and input boxes. The course concludes with a deep dive into learning about branching, looping & procedure code.

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Ecommerce Financial Modelling & Valuation

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This course focuses on ecommerce business model and explores in detail how to create financial models for valuation of ecommerce businesses.

With the exponential growth of ecommerce business models, it has become critical as a financial analyst to have the skills to correctly model an ecommerce business. This industry has its unique features and unique challenges and as an analyst you need to be able to have a deep understanding of those unique features as well as the ability to correctly reflect these in your forecasts and analysis.

This course is crucial for any analyst who is curious about ecommerce businesses and wants to learn more advanced types of financial modelling. The course aims to provide the participants with invaluable additional knowledge and expertise to create clear insights into an ecommerce business through financial modelling and effective presentation outputs.

This is a comprehensive course in its own right and takes the participants all the way through building a financial model for ecommerce businesses, step-bystep, from scratch. We will start with the assumptions and divers i.e. The underlying forces that drive the business and then we will use the formulas and functions to forecast an income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement as well as supporting schedules, that all tie-in together to make this a dynamic ecommerce model.

The course then moves on to create sensitivity analysis, valuation and charts & graphs and thus concludes by producing an absolutely complete financial model for an ecommerce business.