What’s next for your small business?
Don’t ask finance folks for their opinion - learn how to form your own.
Don’t ask finance folks for their opinion - learn how to form your own.
No complicated formulas - we walk you through financial concepts intuitively.
Expanding, hiring, acquiring - don’t rely solely on your gut. Run the numbers.
There are 400+ formulas, but you only need to know a handful. We’ll show you.
… or anyone who wants to start making sound business decisions backed by numbers.
It all starts here: the basic concepts that are the backbone of any financial analysis.
Get acclimated with risk / return trade-offs, the time value of money, cost of capital, Gordon growth model and basic valuation theories.
You may not consider yourself a “finance professional,” but you are one. Your business has finances, and you’re responsible for them. Excel, of course, is our tool of choice.
Even if you’ve never touched Excel before, this half-day course will get you up to speed or shake off any rust.
Build a quick financial summary of a company using recent results. This will get you comfortable structuring and building an analysis in Excel.
Then, perform a few valuations (including a real company case study) using industry-standard techniques and concepts.
Modeling out a private firm requires special considerations that aren’t applicable to big, public corporations. Future projections, employee compensation, standard business expenses, and so on - it’s tricky!
Here, you’ll know the various ins and outs of modeling your business’ structure and key line items.
When private firms get sold, they often come with an earnout arrangement.
This will get you started on how to think about (and actually model) various earnout scenarios, making all the calculations and metrics a breeze.
Our approach is to teach you how to fish, rather than give you a fish.
We don't give a one-way lecture where you memorize every cell and formula.
We nudge you toward uncovering answers on your own by leading with the right questions.
The end result? Longer-term knowledge retention that will last an entire career.
I believe three things set WST apart: the instructors who are at the top of their fields, the emphasis on advanced Excel techniques, and the quality of the templates …
Our Self-Study platform lets you learn at your own pace via instructor-led videos.
Jump start your financial analysis skills today!
All prices are in USD and denote six (6) months of access. Terms apply.
Learn the basic finance concepts that are the backbone of any financial analysis. An understanding of these basic core tools is absolutely critical to mastering any Wall Street analysis. Topics covered include risk / return trade-offs, time value of money, cost of capital, Gordon growth model and basic valuation theories.
Moving beyond the accounting and 10K analysis, this course provides an introduction to the major concepts in finance that many people take for granted. Understanding financial modeling, valuation, and the capital markets in general would be difficult without a full grasp of these fundamental concepts.
1.5 hours / 2 hours
This course focuses on how learning the fundamental building blocks of Excel so you can begin to take advantage and leverage all of Excel’s true capabilities. In order to efficiently build models and crunch large data dumps in Excel, one must master the basics before the advanced content. Learn relevant financial formulas, proper navigation, formatting of files and worksheets, creating calculations in cells, and linking between worksheets/tabs. Functions and tools covered in this course include: mathematical, financial, logic, date/time formulas; data manipulation; anchoring; data tables; and building a capstone model. Emphasis will be on using shortcut keys, simplifying steps, and manipulating data. You will leave with techniques you can use immediately, allowing you to work faster and with less effort.
3 hours / 5 hours
Build very quick financial summary and trading statistics exhibit using historical results, analyst estimates & basic assumptions in Excel. This course will allow you to understand basic structure of building an analysis in Excel and navigating through and becoming efficient in Excel.
1.5 hours / 2 hours
Build upon Corporate Valuation Methodologies with a short, hands-on exercise to hone in the core concepts in practice before diving into the more advanced valuation modeling topics. Translate the valuation concepts into real-life case study that demonstrates and shows the valuation principles.
1.5 hours / 2 hours
Pro Forma financial statements are a tool to recast financial results in a manner that is more representative of future performance and to remove the effects of private ownership. Pro Forma financial statements have one or more assumptions or hypothetical conditions built into the data and are often used to develop core earnings capacity (quality of earnings) when the objective is to value a company for sale to a third party or for internal perpetuation. The goal is to examine a sampling of the most common types of Pro Forma adjustments most often seen when valuing closely-held entities. Similar to analyzing one-time adjustments for public companies, the adjustments can affect both revenues and expenses, increasing or decreasing either one. However, private company pro form adjustments require a much more detailed analysis of each expense line to adjust for the effects of private ownership.
1.5 hours / 2.5 hours
This Merger Modeling - Earnout Discussion module builds upon our M&A Deal Structuring and Merger Modeling Basics course by reconciling differences that arise in private middle-market transactions in which a buyer wants to be rewarded for future growth and a seller is only willing to pay for growth that has been achieved. But, the seller reckons - “why should I sell when I believe I can achieve greater growth and then sell for an even larger valuation at that future point”. The main tool to bridge this gap is for the seller to put his money where his mouth is - if you say you can achieve $1 billion of revenue, then prove it - one should be willing to accept deferred, contingent payments for such future growth that has yet to be realized. In this add-on module, we explore different ways to analyze and structure earnouts.
1 hour / 1.5 hours