BUSINESS VALUATION AND FINANCIAL PLANNING

Kowledge

The aim of the course is to provide students with both the conceptual framework of business valuation issues and the practical skills required in the job-market about investment decisions and consulting services. During the course the commonly used approaches are critically analyzed, particularly with respect to Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) and Relative valuations. At the end of the course students will acquire theoretical instruments to critically understand, interpret and apply modern techniques of business valuation and the relationship with financial markets’ behavior.

Applying Kowledge

The course has a very strong operative focus and students will learn how to prepare rigorous corporate valuation projects, compliant to international standards.

During the course, student will learn-by-doing:

• how to interpret and use financial information from corporate annual reports;
• how to prepare cash flows projection, making reliable assumption about future estimates;
• how to assess corporate risk profile and its relationship with discount rates used in the analysis;
• how to measure and use stock market multiples;
• how to prepare consistent database and address estimation concerns.

At the end of the course, students will be able to apply both Discounted Cash Flow and Relative analyses, identifying the most appropriate approaches according to the final aim of the valuation.

The valuation philosophy; Subjective Biases; Fundamentals: rates, returns, growth; Rates; Valuation approaches: intrinsic, relative and contingent; Business valuation in professional applications; Leasing; Project financing. Case studies.

In Class Lessons.

In cases of on-line classes, all necessary changes will be introduced in order to comply with the planned program.

Text1: A. Damodaran, “Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset, 3rd ed., Wiley (University edition);

Text 2: Lecture Notes