Financial & Valuation Modeling
Certification Program

While EBITDA is a popular measure of profitability, companies increasingly use "adjusted EBITDA" to present profit and show higher EBITDA by excluding significant line items, most notably stock based compensation. We begin by explaining why EBITDA has become more popular than straight cash flow or GAAP profits. We'll build upon this to judge the appropriateness of the most common adjustments that companies now make to EBITDA. We'll use real company filings to examine the most common adjustments today's companies make to EBITDA to show: When using EBITDA is preferable to net income or cash flows, and when it isn't; The rationale for adding back stock based compensation, and how this can lead to overvaluation; The appropriate and inappropriate use of other common adjustments to EBITDA.

Convertible Debt. Convertible Preferred Shares. Warrants. Stock Options. Restricted Stock. In the context of valuation, it's always difficult to accurately quantify all potential claims against the common equity pot. This teach-in will provide a solid foundation for all grey areas in calculating diluted shares outstanding, both from stand-alone and M&A valuation perspectives. We will show you: how to calculate dilution from the exercise of stock options and/or warrants using the Treasury Stock Method; best practices in treating convertible securities and the respective implications on valuation; how to best deal with restricted stock given the context (standalone valuation vs. M&A context).

Corporate finance bankers interact regularly with their product partners in debt capital markets, yet many have a limited understanding of the key drivers behind DCM business. This webinar begins by introducing you to the key DCM business lines, including Loan Syndication, Debt Origination, Liability Management and Risk Management. Next, it examines the ways DCM bankers interact with corporate clients and concludes by explaining how the bank makes money (with just the right amount of bond math).

The unique business model of banks means that the financial statements and core drivers often pose unique challenges in analysis, forecasting and valuation. In this Webinar, we will take the first step toward understanding and analyzing bank financials. It will cover: A bank's major financial statements and how they differ from those of other industries; the key linkages between the financial statements; how a bank's business model and regulatory considerations are reflected in the statements; and how to quickly analyze bank financials.

While the terms “hedge fund” and “long/short” are tossed around frequently, there's little clarity on how these strategies work in practice. Led by Mike Kimpel, Wall Street Prep instructor and adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School's popular Value Investing Program, this teach-in will walk you through the most common "value investing" strategies deployed at "long/short" hedge funds. We will examine real-world case studies to answer the following: What does a long/short investing strategy aim to achieve? What are the typical types of fund strategies? What does long investing look like in practice? What does short investing look like in practice?

Designed for incoming and prospective financial market professionals and investment bankers, this course will use real examples to demonstrate the various use cases for Foreign Exchange (FX) Options. We'll start with an overview of FX options trading conventions and decode some trader jargon before answering: Who trades FX options and why? How do you price an option? What causes the value of an FX option to go up or down? What are some different FX option strategies and why would one use them? At course conclusion, you'll have a strong grasp of how corporates, banks, and investors use FX options to hedge against, or make money from, moves in the underlying FX market.

This course uses transactions such as Monsanto/Syngenta, Sanofi/Medivation and Anthem/Cigna to explain the most common defense mechanisms, tools and strategies companies use to defend against hostile takeovers. Specifically, we answer the following questions: What are the considerations for a tender offer and how does it differ from a proxy contest? What are preventive defense mechanisms such “poison pills” and “staggered boards” and how do they protect a company? What strategies can companies invoke when facing an activist hedge fund? Are companies under any obligation to accept a hostile bid if it is higher than other bids?

This course is designed for incoming restructuring bankers and current bankers looking to further their restructuring or distressed debt knowledge. It provides an in-depth overview of restructuring and identify the skills you'll need in the early days of your restructuring IB career. We begin by introducing the restructuring process as well as common pitchbook and financial analyses in restructuring IB. From there, we take more in-depth look at the analyses and modeling-related techniques utilized by analysts and associates early in their restructuring banking careers. This course assumes little to no prior knowledge of restructuring.

Proficiency in Excel is a fundamental part of the finance job description. And while the Windows version of Excel reigns supreme on the job, in our MBA and undergrad classes we still get the question all the time: “What about Excel on a Mac?” In this course, we introduce Mac users to the basics of Excel. We will cover topics such as: The Mac Excel Layout and Ribbon; Editing and Working with Numbers and Operators; Formatting and Navigation (Worksheets, Workbook, Rows & Columns); Working with Rows & Columns; Time-Saving Tools (Anchoring Cells, Formula Auditing, Interpreting Errors, Find and Replace); Introduction to Functions (SUM, Average, IF and nested IF). The only way to learn Excel is by doing, so you’ll be completing Excel exercises every step of the way.

You know by now that Excel proficiency is a must for any successful finance professional, but it's those who venture into Excel's advanced functionality that will become standout analysts. This webinar will teach you how to: Unlock the Developer Ribbon in order to use VBA; Manipulate cells and sheets, whether they're hidden or not; Record, modify and write macros from scratch; Set up special commands when a button is pressed, a cell is selected, or a cell's value is changed; Run through your code, line by line, to debug.

The unique business model of insurance companies is reflected in their financial reporting, and leads to a differentiated approach towards analysis, forecasting and valuation. In this webinar, we will take the first step towards understanding and analyzing such financials to answer the following: What a non-life insurer’s major financial statements look like and how they differ from those of other industries; What key linkages exist between the financial statements; How an insurer’s business model and regulatory considerations impact financial reporting; How a quick analysis of insurance financials is done.

This webinar is designed to help participants understand the structure and layout of the O&G financial reports. We start by looking at different O&G accounting methods and their impact on financial statements. We then touch on the differences between 1P, 2P, and 3P reserves before spending the rest of the time analyzing and interpreting O&G financial statements, footnotes, and disclosures, and on performing O&G ratio analysis.

Designed for incoming and prospective investment bankers, private equity associates and lenders, this course will show you how professionals analyze private companies in order to evaluate investment opportunities, drive valuation, inform a sell-side and/or buy-side process and generally assess overall financial health. Part one will cover private company analysis in early stages of the investment process, and will answer: Historically and today, how healthy is the company? What does the company's financial future look like? What challenges exist when working with a private company? What's different when analyzing a private vs public company?

Junior bankers who aspire for advancement often struggle with the challenge of stepping out of their technically oriented analyst/associate role and into a more customer- and relationship-oriented role of a senior banker. "Moving from Junior to Senior Banker: Skills for Negotiating Transactions" covers: Power and leverage in a negotiation; When should you make the opening bid; How to counter hardball tactics; How to deal with liars or unethical negotiators; How to break the zero sum model and create value for your clients; The importance of framing; How the nature of the relationship drives the negotiating style.

This course is meant to introduce newbies to a high level overview of financial restructuring and set the stage for further more advanced analysis. The first few lessons demonstrate using simple examples how companies find themselves in distress. The next several lessons illustrate how financial restructuring can be used to cure the distress. The last several lessons dive deeper into priorities, valuation of firms under distress, and considerations for distressed debt investors.

Commodity prices are volatile. For companies in the business of producing or selling commodities, revenue and cash flow forecasts rely heavily on the price at which they can sell their commodities in the future. So heavily, in fact, that firms aggressively use hedging strategies to protect against changes in commodity prices. In this course designed for Oil and Gas investment banking, private equity, and research professionals, we'll demystify how oil and gas producers use hedges and how to adjust financial models to correctly reflect them.

M&A accounting and purchase price allocation in particular are challenging concepts for practitioners to understand and correctly implement into models. In this webinar, we'll take the first step towards understanding the general PPA process and procedures to answer the following: What is purchase price allocation and how is it performed? What is the PPA impact on financial statements? What are the key differences between PPA requirements for public companies vs. privately-held businesses? How do we handle complexities around various purchase considerations?