What is a Qualitative Financial Statement Analysis, Credit Analysis for Cheap?

Before you take up this course, let me tell you This Course DOESN’T cover Ratio Analysis, Financial Modeling or other Quantitative Finance Methods. Rather, it asks you to avoid using Excel. Yes, this is a unique Financial Statement Analysis course that focuses on Analyzing Financials (numbers) using a Qualitative Approach – where you try to read beyond what is obvious, beyond what numbers often tell you. This course dumps the traditional analysis methods taught in b-schools and takes a more practical and comprehensive approach.

Using a Qualitative Approach combines financials with business of the company & keeps its focus on the quality aspects. In other word, it is a combination of Financial Analysis + Business Analysis. The approach focuses on reading about business from a financial metric – for example Revenue of $3 billion (Rs 21,000 crores) tells you a lot. While it’s the amount of sales done by a company in year, it also tells you that it’s a large company, it’s not a start-up, should have been in existence for quite some time (may be a few decades), should be commanding large market share & so on. This means, a number can hold much more information than what we generally think of. We will learn many such insights in this course. We will also interconnect P&L with Balance Sheet and Cash flow.

Often students and new analysts focuses too much on calculating financial ratios, building models & in this process they miss out on discovering the true story of the company using financials. Yes, it is possible to read the story of the company from financials, as if you are reading a book. Just that you need to focus on quality behind each number & know the interconnect between P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow.

This course is part of a 2-Series Financial Statement Analysis Course viz (1) Qualitative Analysis (2) Quantitative Analysis. The 1st course avoids using Excel & calculating ratios. Rather it focuses on Quality of each number. It’s all about numbers & it’s quite enriching, just that it may not look as fancy as Financial Modeling. The 2nd course, which is an extension of 1st course, involves Quantitative methods, Financial Modeling, Ratio Analysis and all that students & finance aspirants often think of.

My suggestion is to take up both the courses. You won’t repent.