In last week’s MBA Mondays, I introduced the topic that we’ll be focused on for the next month or so; projections, budgeting, and forecasting. In that post, I described projecting as a “what if” exercise that is done at a higher level of abstraction than the budgeting and forecasting exercises. I said this about projections:

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Continue readingScenarios

MBA Mondays is starting a new topic this week. It’s a big one and I think we’ll end up doing at least four and maybe even five posts on this topic in the coming weeks.

I said the following in one of my first MBA Mondays posts:

companies are worth the…

Continue readingProjections, Budgeting and Forecasting

Continue readingPrice: Why Lower Isn’t Always Better

The past five MBA Mondays posts have been about accounting concepts, financial statements, and related issues. I don’t know about all of you, but I’m a bit tired of that stuff. So I’m moving on to something a bit different.

Every business should have a set of metrics that it tracks on a regular basis. These metrics could…

Continue readingKey Business Metrics

This topic could be and is a full semester course at some business schools. It is a deep and rich topic that I can’t cover in one single blog post. But it is also a relatively narrow skill set at its most developed levels. If you are going to be a public equity analyst, you need to understand this stuff…

Continue readingAnalyzing Financial Statements

This week on MBA Mondays we are going to talk about cash flow. A few weeks ago, in my post on Accounting, I said there were three major accounting statements. We’ve talked about the Income Statement and the Balance Sheet. The third is the Cash Flow Statement.

I’ve…

Continue readingCash Flow

Today on MBA Mondays we are going to talk about the Balance Sheet.

The Balance Sheet shows how much capital you have built up in your business.

If you go back to my post on Accounting, you will recall that there are two kinds of accounts in a company’s chart of accounts; revenue…

Continue readingThe Balance Sheet

Today on MBA Mondays we are going to talk about one of the most important things in business, the profit and loss statement (also known as the P&L).

Picking up from the accounting post last week, there are two kinds of accounting entries; those that describe money coming into and out of your business, and money…

Continue readingThe Profit and Loss Statement

I’m making up the curriculum for MBA Mondays on the fly. The end game is to lay out how to look a businesses, value it, and invest in it. We started with the time value of money and interest rates, we then talked about the corporate entity. Now I want to talk about how to keep track of the money…

Continue readingAccounting

Continue readingPiercing The Corporate Veil