CORPORATE FINANCE

This opening session sets the foundation for the course by aligning on expectations, structure, and outcomes. You’ll meet your instructor, understand how the course is designed to build progressively toward a complete corporate finance toolkit, and get clarity on assignments and the final project so you can plan your time and effort effectively from day one.

• Meet your instructor
• Course structure 
• Assignments
• Final project overview

This class establishes the core purpose of corporate finance: maximizing long-term company value. You’ll explore how finance functions as the steward of financial decision-making, balancing growth, profitability, liquidity, and risk. By comparing different business models, you’ll learn where value is truly created—and how finance leaders define a clear “North Star” for the organization.

• What is corporate finance?
• Core activities of corporate finance
• Value creation frameworks
• Business model overview
• Workshop: Value driver analysis

This session builds financial fluency by demystifying the three core financial statements and how they connect. You’ll learn how real business activity flows through the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement—and how to interpret what those flows reveal about performance, stability, and cash generation.

• The income statement
• The balance sheet
• The cash flow statement
• Statement linkages
• Workshop: 3-statement linkage mapping

Assignment #1: Financial Statement Analysis
Analyze a 3-statement financial package, calculate key ratios, assess risks and opportunities, and provide initial forecasting insights.

In this class, you’ll move from raw financials to insight. You’ll calculate and interpret profitability, liquidity, leverage, and efficiency ratios to diagnose financial health. Using DuPont analysis, you’ll break down Return on Equity to pinpoint exactly where value is being created—or eroded.

• Profitability ratios
• Liquidity ratios
• Leverage ratios
• Efficiency ratios
• DuPont analysis
• Demo: Financial Health Diagnostic

This session focuses on one of finance’s most critical skills: explaining performance. You’ll learn how to break down revenue and cost variances using Price–Volume–Mix analysis, then translate those findings into clear, executive-ready narratives that drive decisions—not confusion.

• Budgeting vs actuals (BvA)
• Price, volume, mix analysis
• Cost variances
• Writing clear financial stories
• Workshop: Executive Narrative

Assignment #2: Performance Review Packet
Deliver a ratio analysis, variance breakdown, and a one-page executive summary highlighting key insights and actions.

This class introduces the building blocks of forecasting. You’ll learn how to combine top-down market logic with bottom-up operational drivers to create a credible, driver-based revenue forecast. The focus is on building forecasts that are both analytically rigorous and business-relevant.

• Forecasting methods
• Revenue forecasting
• Forecasting cost of goods sold
• Workshop: Building a 3-year revenue forecast model

This session expands the forecast by modeling operating expenses with discipline and transparency. You’ll learn how to distinguish fixed and variable costs, stress-test assumptions through scenarios, and document your logic so forecasts remain defensible under scrutiny.

• Opex modeling
• Scenario and sensitivity analysis
• Forecast assumptions documentation
• Workshop: Scenario & Sensitivity Modeling 

Assignment #3: Revenue & Cost Forecast 
Build revenue, COGS, and OpEx models with documented assumptions, forming the foundation of the Income Statement forecast.

Here, you assemble a complete forward-looking Income Statement. By linking revenue and cost forecasts with depreciation, interest, and taxes, you’ll analyze how scale, unit economics, and operating leverage shape future profitability.

• Linking the forecast
• Unit economics
• Case-Study + Demo: Debugging a flawed IS forecast

This class completes the three-statement model. You’ll build Balance Sheet and Cash Flow forecasts using working capital schedules, CAPEX planning, and debt rollforwards—ensuring everything ties to cash correctly and dynamically.

• Working capital modeling
• PP&E & CAPEX
• Debt schedules
• Cash flow statement
• Workshop: Working capital rollforward modeling

Assignment #4: Full BS + CFS Forecasts
Deliver fully linked Balance Sheet and Cash Flow forecasts that reconcile to ending cash.

This session explains how companies determine their investment hurdle rate. You’ll calculate the Weighted Average Cost of Capital by estimating the costs of equity and debt, and assess how capital structure choices affect valuation and investment decisions.

• Cost of equity
• Cost of debt
• WACC calculation
• Workshop: WACC Calculation

This class brings valuation and capital allocation together. You’ll value a business using DCF and comparable multiples, then evaluate investment opportunities using NPV and IRR—defending capital allocation decisions with data and sensitivity analysis.

• DCF valuation
• Relative valuation
• CAPEX & investment decision frameworks
• Case Study: Investment Decision (NPV/IRR)

Assignment #5: Valuation Packet
Deliver a WACC calculation, DCF model, comps analysis, and concise valuation insights.

This session connects finance to strategy. You’ll learn how to identify and quantify the operational drivers that matter most—and translate them into clear financial recommendations that support strategic decision-making.

• How finance supports strategic decisions
• Identifying value drivers
• Strategic recommendations
• Workshop: Identifying strategic levers for a business

In this class, you’ll focus on executive communication. You’ll learn how to structure Quarterly Business Reviews, build clear financial narratives, and convert complex analysis into concise, action-oriented insights for senior leadership.

• Monthly and quarterly business reviews
• Slide-building & narrative rules
• Creating actionable insights
• Workshop: Building a QBR deck from raw data

Assignment #6 — Draft QBR Report
Create a 10–12 slide QBR covering performance, forecast, valuation, risks, and actions.

This hands-on session is dedicated to refining your work. Through peer review and instructor coaching, you’ll stress-test assumptions, sharpen narratives, and prepare your model and QBR for executive-level scrutiny.

• Fully linked 3-statement model
• Assumptions appendix
• QBR deck
• Talking points
• Forecast scenario analysis
• Peer review

The course concludes with optional final presentations simulating an executive review. You’ll demonstrate both technical mastery and strategic thinking, then reflect on how to apply your new corporate finance toolkit to advance your career.

• Complete IS/BS/CFS forecast
• Sensitivity analysis
• Strategic recommendations
• Valuation summary
• Key insights