Rice University
Finance for Non-Finance Professionals
Rice University

Finance for Non-Finance Professionals

Taught in English

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171,589 already enrolled

Course

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals

James Weston

Instructor: James Weston

4.8

(2,606 reviews)

Beginner level
No prior experience required
13 hours to complete
3 weeks at 4 hours a week
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace

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Assessments

10 quizzes

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There are 5 modules in this course

Welcome to Finance for Non-Finance Professionals! In this section you will find general information about the course and instructions on how to navigate the course. For the first week of lectures, we will be covering the basics of financial valuation. We will start with the basics of compounding and discounting rates of return over time. Using these tools we will then move on to valuation using the discounted cash flow method. Along the way, we will demonstrate our valuation tools with a variety of practical examples and compare our analysis with other valuation techniques.

What's included

15 videos3 readings2 quizzes1 discussion prompt

Welcome to the second week of Finance for Non-Finance Professionals! In this week of the course, we will build on the basic valuation tools from week one to start making capital budgeting decisions. Our capital budgeting review covers the basic tools like Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, Payback period, and return on capital. Our discussion of the relative advantages of each different tool leads us into sensitivity analysis and the advantages of spreadsheet modeling.

What's included

11 videos1 reading2 quizzes

Welcome back to Finance for Non-Finance Professionals! In our third week together, we will go on a treasure hunt through the financial statements. Using discounted cash flows as our motivation, we search through the income statement and balance sheet for all the uses and sources of cash. Our search leads us to our primary measure of value creation: Free Cash Flow. Free cash flow will form the basis of most financial analysis and this module gives us a roadmap for estimating and forecasting cash creation within any organization.

What's included

10 videos1 reading2 quizzes

Welcome back everyone! In our final week together in this course, we switch gears and take an external view of the firm from a Wall Street, or capital markets, perspective. We think about the basic tradeoff between risk and return, how to measure risk, and how to put a risk premium on different kinds of investments. We then take our analysis of risk and return and use it to estimate a firm's cost of capital. Finally, we circle back to free cash flows, capital budgeting and valuation to tie together all four weeks and get ready for our capstone case analysis.

What's included

10 videos2 readings2 quizzes

In this final part of the course we bring all of our analysis to bear on a realistic case study. We will evaluate the investment prospects of Sunrise Bakery. As their CFO considers a large capital expenditure, she needs to think about the tradeoff between spending money today and generating more free cash flow in the future. Our job in this case is to forecast the amount of cash generation the new equipment will produce, discount the cash flows, and use all of our capital budgeting tools to make a sound financial recommendation.

What's included

1 video3 readings2 quizzes

Instructor

Instructor ratings
4.8 (576 ratings)
James Weston
Rice University
10 Courses184,639 learners

Offered by

Rice University

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4.8

2,606 reviews

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Reviewed on May 22, 2023

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Reviewed on Mar 25, 2018

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