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LinkedIn Learning

Financial Analysis: Making Business Projections

via LinkedIn Learning

Overview

Analyze past performance data and get a realistic picture of your company's future performance using Microsoft Excel.

Syllabus

Introduction
  • Welcome
  • What you should know before watching this course
1. Financial Projection Basics
  • Financial projections
  • The difference between forecasting and planning
  • Treating start-ups and established businesses differently
  • The top-down and bottom-up approaches
  • Volatility and the treatment of exceptional elements
2. Estimating Volumes, Price, and Revenue
  • Revenue projection basics
  • Preparing past P&Ls
  • Projecting revenue based on your resources
  • Adjusting for changes in productivity
  • Adjusting for changing resources
  • Detailing your plan by month using seasonality
  • Creating a product-level projection
  • Adding back exceptional elements using pipeline information
  • Market-driven forecasting
3. Estimating Cost of Production and Margin
  • Gross-margin projection basics
  • Determining which gross-margin profile to use
  • Combining product performance with product margins
4. Estimating Operating Expenses
  • Operating expenses (OPEX) projection basics
  • Excluding exceptional items
  • Projecting fixed OPEX
  • Projecting variable OPEX
  • Adding back exceptional elements
5. The Top-Down Approach
  • Explaining the top-down approach
  • The revenue trajectory method
  • The exit methodology
  • Projecting gross margin and OPEX
6. Setting Up Targets
  • Finding balance between the two approaches
  • Moving from forecast to plan
  • Adapting projects for start-ups
  • Developing worst-case scenarios
Conclusion
  • Next steps

Taught by

Rudolph Rosenberg

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4.4 rating at LinkedIn Learning based on 369 ratings

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