Applied Financial Statement Analysis with Data Analytics

2.5 credits

The objective of this course is to develop and sharpen your analytical ability to use financial information to perform various types of appliedeconomic and financial analysis. Managers formulate a firm's business strategy and make operating, investing, and financing policy decisions to implement that strategy. The outcomes of those decisions are reflected in the firm's financial statements which, along with other financial information, are used by equity and debt analysts, investors, lenders, creditors, bondholders, loan officers, debt-rating agencies, and numerous other external parties to evaluate the firm's current economic performance and to forecast its future economic performance. A key aspect of the course is the link between managers' strategic decisions and the resulting performance that gets reflected in the firm's financial statements. This course develops the analytical and technical skills and related applied analysis techniques required to perform a wide variety of economic analyses using financial information. Among other things, applied financial analysis requires knowledge of the various techniques used to analyze financial information such as common-size and trend analysis, ratio analysis, modeling the predictable cash flow effects of sales growth, models of financial distress, forecasting techniques, valuation models, as well as the ability to select and apply the appropriate techniques in a given economic setting. This course develops your ability to perform economic analysis in a wide variety of real-world settings using a number of different applied financial analysis techniques.