Company Valuation with Discounted Cash Flow (DCF)

How do investors and analysts determine what a company is actually worth? Understanding company valuation is a fundamental skill for anyone looking to make informed investment decisions, analyze corporate health, or build a career in finance. This text-only course guides you through the entire process of building a Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model from scratch. You will learn how to read financial statements, project future performance, and discount those projections back to the present day using modern, industry-standard methods. By studying clear written explanations and analyzing step-by-step financial scenarios, you will gain the confidence to evaluate businesses independently. What you'll learn: - Understand the core principles of the time value of money and intrinsic value - Forecast free cash flows using historical financial statements and growth assumptions - Calculate the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) using modern risk-free rate and cost of debt estimations - Determine terminal value using both the perpetuity growth and exit multiple approaches - Perform sensitivity analysis to assess how changes in key assumptions impact your valuation - Apply best practices for structuring clean, readable financial models The course begins with foundational concepts, defining key terminology and the theory behind cash flows before moving into step-by-step calculations and practical modeling scenarios. It is designed specifically for beginners, finance students, and aspiring analysts, requiring no prior valuation experience. Start reading today to master the essential framework of modern corporate valuation.