On the completion of this course students should be able to:
- Understand financial statements to identify a company's performance, solvency, and liquidity.
- Prepare basic financial statements using past performance analysis and integrating forward assumptions.
- Understand the relevance and implications of the company's operating cycle on its short-term sustainability.
- Know the relevance of cash flows and the interpretation of free cash flows for evaluation purposes.
- Understand the concepts of debt funding and equity funding.
- Understand the concepts of opportunity costs and hurdle rate to maintain financiers' interest.
- Developing the business plan of a company of student's choice, within the digital sector.
Topic 1: Understanding financial management.
Topic 2: Evaluation of financial assets.
Topic 3: The time-value of money.
Topic 4: Meaning and measurements of risk and (potential) return.
Topic 5: Management of risk vs. return trade-off.
Topic 6: Understanding financial statements.
Topic 7: Interpretation and use of financial statements.
Topic 8: Use of financials for evaluation and projection.
Topic 9: Interest rates and debt fundraising.
Topic 10: Interest rates and equity fundraising.
Topic 11: Identifying interest rates, WACC.
The weekly class time will typically consist of a two-hour lecture and two sessions dedicated to solving past assignments and preparing upcoming problems. Lectures will entail increasing involvements from students, culminating with the individual case presentation to the class, on session 14.
The course grade will be based on the following point breakdown:
(A) Class participation and Continuous evaluation: 20%. Individual work
(B) Practical cases: 20%. Team work. It is the student's responsibility to deliver individually the task in its folder.
(C) Midterm exam: 30% (Minimum to be accepted /validated is a grade of 5, so to eliminate the previous/done material)
(D) Final exam: 30%. The student must have a minimum grade of 4/10 for the final grade to be calculated by applying the final grade weighting in 1st call.
FINAL NOTE IN 1ST CALL: 20% (A) + 20% (B) + 30% (C) + 30% (D)
Retake Policy: If the student fails the course, he or she must take a make-up exam. This exam will be based on all the course material. The final grade will be 60% of the make-up exam (E) grade and the remaining 40% will be calculated by the grades obtained throughout the course based on the following distribution: (A) continuous evaluation (20% ), (B) practical cases (20%) - The student must have a minimum score of 4/10 in the recovery exam for the final grade to be calculated by applying the weighting in extraordinary call.
FINAL NOTE IN RETAKE: 20% (A) + 20% (B) + 60% (E)
Foundations of Finance, Keown, Martin, Petty Pearson, 9th edition, ISBN 978-1292155135. Recommended reading: Financial times, Wall street journal, Bloomberg, The Economist.