How to Understand Financial Statements


Book Description

Covers numerous aspects of financial analysis, including an overview of the institutional environment, income statements, balance sheets, the statement of cash flows and the quality of reported earnings and assets.




The Portable Financial Analyst


Book Description

Financial professionals are faced with increasingly technical topics that are theoretically complicated but practically necessary in determining the trade-off between risk and return. The Portable Financial Analyst, Second Edition is a unique collection of essays that address the heart of every analyst's and investor's dilemma: how to make decisions in the face of unknown forces and how to assert some control over the outcome




The Essentials of Financial Analysis


Book Description

It’s easier than you think to understand the financial reports you face every day . . . If your job focus is on managing employees and overseeing corporate affairs, financial analysis may sound like a foreign language to you. But, in today’s competitive business environment, it is crucial that managers and business executives have a firm grasp of financial analysis. The Essentials of Financial Analysis simplifies an often difficult-to-understand topic so stakeholders ranging from employees to executives to investors can understand and discuss an organization’s financial workings. The Essentials of Financial Analysis delivers practical, in-depth coverage on the key components of financial reporting, budgeting, and analysis to help you better relate to the numbers behind the business issues you face every day. By the time you turn the final page of this book, you will be able to command confident discussions on performance, investment, and other financial situations with members of your finance team and senior management. This hands-on book helps you make better business decisions by showing you how to structure financial analysis, as well as: Contribute to an organization’s success and guide others companywide to make better financial decisions Reduce cost of capital and hurdle rates by selecting the financial markets, intermediaries, and instruments that work best for your company’s financing needs Increase shareholder value by pursuing growth through capital investment, new products, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and other strategies Your career success and the prosperity of your company depends on your ability to understand and act upon basic financial principles. With The Essentials of Financial Analysis, you can go inside the numbers and get a clear picture of where your company has been, where it is going, and how you can help it get there.




Financial Planning & Analysis and Performance Management


Book Description

Critical insights for savvy financial analysts Financial Planning & Analysis and Performance Management is the essential desk reference for CFOs, FP&A professionals, investment banking professionals, and equity research analysts. With thought-provoking discussion and refreshing perspective, this book provides insightful reference for critical areas that directly impact an organization’s effectiveness. From budgeting and forecasting, analysis, and performance management, to financial communication, metrics, and benchmarking, these insights delve into the cornerstones of business and value drivers. Dashboards, graphs, and other visual aids illustrate complex concepts and provide reference at a glance, while the author’s experience as a CFO, educator, and general manager leads to comprehensive and practical analytical techniques for real world application. Financial analysts are under constant pressure to perform at higher and higher levels within the realm of this consistently challenging function. Though areas ripe for improvement abound, true resources are scarce—until now. This book provides real-world guidance for analysts ready to: Assess performance of FP&A function and develop improvement program Improve planning and forecasting with new and provocative thinking Step up your game with leading edge analytical tools and practical solutions Plan, analyze and improve critical business and value drivers Build analytical capability and effective presentation of financial information Effectively evaluate capital investments in uncertain times The most effective analysts are those who are constantly striving for improvement, always seeking new solutions, and forever in pursuit of enlightening resources with real, useful information. Packed with examples, practical solutions, models, and novel approaches, Financial Planning & Analysis and Performance Management is an invaluable addition to the analyst’s professional library. Access to a website with many of the tools introduced are included with the purchase of the book.




Healthcare Finance


Book Description

Why healthcare finance? -- From the laboratory to the patient -- Present value relations -- Evaluating business opportunities -- Valuing bonds -- Valuing stocks -- Portfolio management and the cost of capital -- Therapeutic development and clinical trials -- Decision trees and real options -- Monte Carlo simulation -- Healthcare analytics -- Biotech venture capital -- Securitizing biomedical assets -- Pricing, value, and ethics -- Epilogue : a case study pf royalty pharma.




Stories of Capitalism


Book Description

Meeting the predictors -- The problem with forecasting in economic theory -- Inside Swiss banking -- Among financial analysts -- Intrinsic value, market value, and the search for information -- The construction of an investment narrative -- The politics of circulating narratives -- Analysts as animators -- Why the economy needs narratives




Financial Statement Analysis


Book Description

Praise for Financial Statement Analysis A Practitioner's Guide Third Edition "This is an illuminating and insightful tour of financial statements, how they can be used to inform, how they can be used to mislead, and how they can be used to analyze the financial health of a company." -Professor Jay O. Light Harvard Business School "Financial Statement Analysis should be required reading for anyone who puts a dime to work in the securities markets or recommends that others do the same." -Jack L. Rivkin Executive Vice President (retired) Citigroup Investments "Fridson and Alvarez provide a valuable practical guide for understanding, interpreting, and critically assessing financial reports put out by firms. Their discussion of profits-'quality of earnings'-is particularly insightful given the recent spate of reporting problems encountered by firms. I highly recommend their book to anyone interested in getting behind the numbers as a means of predicting future profits and stock prices." -Paul Brown Chair-Department of Accounting Leonard N. Stern School of Business, NYU "Let this book assist in financial awareness and transparency and higher standards of reporting, and accountability to all stakeholders." -Patricia A. Small Treasurer Emeritus, University of California Partner, KCM Investment Advisors "This book is a polished gem covering the analysis of financial statements. It is thorough, skeptical and extremely practical in its review." -Daniel J. Fuss Vice Chairman Loomis, Sayles & Company, LP




Handbook of Financial Analysis for Corporate Managers


Book Description

A handbook for professionals in business and industry illustrating the integrated hands-on applications of a range of financial techniques to twenty typical business situations, as well as introducing new techniques for financial analysis where traditional tools are lacking.




A Pragmatist's Guide to Leveraged Finance


Book Description

The high-yield leveraged bond and loan market (“junk bonds”) is now valued at $3+ trillion in North America, €1 trillion in Europe, and another $1 trillion in emerging markets. What’s more, based on the maturity schedules of current debt, it’s poised for massive growth. To successfully issue, evaluate, and invest in high-yield debt, however, financial professionals need credit and bond analysis skills specific to these instruments. Now, for the first time, there’s a complete, practical, and expert tutorial and workbook covering all facets of modern leveraged finance analysis. In A Pragmatist’s Guide to Leveraged Finance, Credit Suisse managing director Bob Kricheff explains why conventional analysis techniques are inadequate for leveraged instruments, clearly defines the unique challenges sellers and buyers face, walks step-by-step through deriving essential data for pricing and decision-making, and demonstrates how to apply it. Using practical examples, sample documents, Excel worksheets, and graphs, Kricheff covers all this, and much more: yields, spreads, and total return; ratio analysis of liquidity and asset value; business trend analysis; modeling and scenarios; potential interest rate impacts; evaluating and potentially escaping leveraged finance covenants; how to assess equity (and why it matters); investing on news and events; early stage credit; and creating accurate credit snapshots. This book is an indispensable resource for all investment and underwriting professionals, money managers, consultants, accountants, advisors, and lawyers working in leveraged finance. In fact, it teaches credit analysis skills that will be valuable in analyzing a wide variety of higher-risk investments, including growth stocks.




Statistics and Data Analysis for Financial Engineering


Book Description

The new edition of this influential textbook, geared towards graduate or advanced undergraduate students, teaches the statistics necessary for financial engineering. In doing so, it illustrates concepts using financial markets and economic data, R Labs with real-data exercises, and graphical and analytic methods for modeling and diagnosing modeling errors. These methods are critical because financial engineers now have access to enormous quantities of data. To make use of this data, the powerful methods in this book for working with quantitative information, particularly about volatility and risks, are essential. Strengths of this fully-revised edition include major additions to the R code and the advanced topics covered. Individual chapters cover, among other topics, multivariate distributions, copulas, Bayesian computations, risk management, and cointegration. Suggested prerequisites are basic knowledge of statistics and probability, matrices and linear algebra, and calculus. There is an appendix on probability, statistics and linear algebra. Practicing financial engineers will also find this book of interest.