Advanced Financial Analysis Training Course in Dubai, UAE

Course overview

Financial analysis is a vital part of any sustainable and profitable organization because only a professional in financial statement analysis can control the performance indicators and the overall budgeting health of an organization. This course on techniques of financial analysis is essential for those who have to read, understand, and analyze financial statements. The training will help you to identify the budgeting problems which businesses and investors face with, to feel confident in credit and risk analysis, to assess the overall performance, to prepare data and reports for top managers.

This advanced financial analysis course provides attendees with a comprehensive overview of the key techniques in financial analysis. Starting from the fundamentals of budgeting analysis using common sizing and ratio analysis, participants will learn detailed Du Pont analysis techniques to uncover underlying sources of changes in ROE. We will then turn a more skeptical eye towards profits and compare and contrast profits to cash flow. An important part of this training is critical credit analysis and considering the possible creative accounting techniques, as well as off-balance sheet items and inadequate contingent liability reporting. By projecting your analysis into the future, you will learn about corporate valuation techniques and methods to generate predicted financial statements.

Important note: laptops will be required for this course, for modeling and calculations in Excel.

Throughout this course, participants will cover the most crucial topics in this field of expertise and obtain several financial analyst core competencies:

• Realize the full range of capabilities of financial analysis
• Know how to review correlations between profits and cash flow
• Develop skills in creative accounting techniques
• Learn the crucial principles of quality financial statements
• Explore the best practices on how to work with credit analysis
• Make reliable predictions based on your analysis

Who Should Attend

• Chief and Senior Accountants,
• Accounting Managers
• Accountants
• Finance Directors and Managers
• Financial Analysts
• Financial Controllers
• Heads of Finance Departments
• Credit Controllers
• Corporate Financiers
• All Finance professionals interested in advanced financial analysis

What will you gain

• Understand the uses and limitations of financial analysis
• Assess the financial health of a business
• Identify and assess risk areas in a business
• Identify areas and issues that may require further investigation
• Apply and interpret financial ratios
• Use Du Pont analysis to determine the key underlying driver(s) of ROE
• Understand and assess the link between operating cash flow and working capital
• Analyze the key ratios regarding cash flow and working capital
• Assess the quality of financial statements and identify potential creative accounting
• Perform corporate valuation with proven approaches
• Create highly reliable forecasted financial statements

Course content

• Introduction to financial analysis
  • Objectives of financial analysis
  • The required mental attitude for financial analysis
  • The applications, usefulness and limitations of financial analysis
• Reporting standards
  • Importance of reporting standards in financial analysis and valuation
  • International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) versus Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)
  • Rules comparisons affecting analysis
• Common sizing
  • Vertical common sizing
  • Common sizing combined with horizontal analysis
• Ratios
  • Applications and limitations of ratio analysis
  • Risk ratios
  • Profitability ratios
  • Valuation ratios
• Time series and graphical presentation
  • Performing time series calculations
  • Stacked charts
  • Line graphs
• Regression analysis
• Profit and cash flow
  • What is profit?
  • Profit vs cash flow
  • Cash flow ratios
  • The relationship between working capital and cash flow
  • Evaluating financial flexibility
• Quality of financial statements and creative accounting
  • Principles of accounting as they relate to quality of financial statements
  • Definition of earnings quality
  • Revenue management
  • Expenses management
  • Creative accounting techniques
    • Inventory valuation
    • Depreciation manipulation
    • Capitalization of costs
    • Revaluation of assets
  • How to use the cash flow statement to detect creative accounting tactics
  • Off balance sheet accounting and contingent liabilities
    • Ways in which companies create off balance sheet debt
    • Contingent liabilities assessed in a favourable manner to the company
  • Sudden surprises
    • Sudden changes in the assets or liabilities
  • Beneish M-score
• Credit analysis
  • The credit rating process
  • Selected ratios for credit analysis
  • Altman Z-score
• Forward looking analysis: projections
  • Projecting revenue, gross profit and net profit
  • Using activity ratios and efficiency ratios to project the balance sheet working capital items
  • Projecting asset levels and depreciation
  • Projecting the cash flow statement
  • Identifying and analysing risks
  • Sensitivity analysis on projections
• Corporate Valuation
  • Dividend discount model
  • P/E valuation
  • EBITDA total enterprise valuation
  • Discounted cash flow (DCF) equity valuation
  • Sensitivity analyses
• Closing remarks
  • The need to take a basket approach to ratios and tools
  • Recognition that numbers alone will not tell the whole story