Financial Modeling and Valuation: A Practical Guide

Book Preface

This book is divided into two parts:
1. Financial Statements and Projections
2. Valuation
In Part One, we will build a complete financial model of Walmart. We will analyze the company’s historical performance and step through techniques to make accurate projections of the business’s future performance. The goal of this section is not only to understand how to build a model of Walmart, but also to extract the modeling techniques used by analysts and to apply those techniques to any investment. Once we have a good understanding of Walmart’s past and future performance, Part Two will help us interpret the company’s financials into a valuation analysis using the methods mentioned previously. You may skip directly to Part Two if your needs do not require building a complete financial model. It is important to note it is not 100 percent necessary to have a full-scale model in order to conduct a valuation analysis, but it is recommended. Valuation techniques are based on a summary of the company’s performance. In this case, to be complete, we will use the model of the company built in Part One to extract the necessary summary information and to conduct the valuation analysis. However, you could technically use summary information as well.

The book is designed to have you build your own model on Walmart step-by-step. The model template can be found on the companion web site associated with this book and is titled “NYSF—Walmart—Template.xls.” To access the site, go to www.wiley.com/go/pignataro (password: investment).