Financial Analysis Tools and Techniques: A Guide for Managers

This title contains proven techniques for all managers and financial professionals to generate, understand, and act upon key financial information. The syntax and 'code' of financial analysis, along with the avenues for arriving at appropriate and useful answers, have long seemed like a foreign language to nonfinancial managers. "Financial Analysis Tools and Techniques" simplifies the process, and provides busy managers and professionals with the guidelines they need for conducting effective analysis and making sound economic trade-offs and business decisions.In a business systems context, this essential book explains how to: interpret financial statements; develop financial projections; evaluate business investment decisions; assess the implications of financing choices; derive the value of a business or security; understand the role of analysis in creating shareholder value; and financial genome by Modernsoft, Inc. This advanced knowledge-based business analysis and planning software is fully integrated with this book, allowing users to: access data from databases, spreadsheets, user input; develop free-form or structured analysis with consistency; produce a wide variety of customizable financial statements; and create integrated financial pro-forma projections. Since the first of its ten editions appeared in 1963, Erich Helfert's seminal "Techniques of Financial Analysis" has provided business students as well as financial practitioners with a concise and practical overview of financial analysis tools and concepts.What sets this classic text apart then, and continues to distinguish it today, has been its focus on the continuous interrelationship between management decisions and the economic value of a business, explained in a unique systems context. "Financial Analysis: Tools and Techniques" adapts this seminal reference to today's fast-changing professional market and establishes a new benchmark for direct, concise, and practical financial analysis information and interpretation. Specifically addressing key analytical needs in the tumultuous twenty-first-century business environment, it comments on valuable business applications of the tools and concepts with insights from Erich Helfert and his consulting clients.Providing focused analysis of the economics of business investments and valuation, presenting discussions of cash-flow trade-offs and time-value analysis against the strategic backdrop of the business system, and emphasizing enhancement of shareholder value through value-based management (VBM), "Financial Analysis: Tools and Techniques" will help all nonfinancial managers to make sound investment, operating, and financing decisions.Concise yet sufficiently detailed, it covers the full range of financial analysis issues, including: managing the business as a system; financial statements; funds cycles for manufacturing, sales, and service; cash management; ratio analysis and performance; pro-forma financial statements; financial modeling; leverage financial growth plans; time value of money; analysis of investment decisions; using return standards; cost of capital; financing choices; definitions of value; and shareholder value and value-based methodologies. "Financial Analysis: Tools and Techniques" is a quick and easy read for the nonfinancial manager and an excellent refresher and reference for the financial professional. In conjunction with its companion software Financial Genome, it represents the next step in financial analysis one that gives financial analysis and economic decisions their proper importance and context in the successful operation of a business.

Erich A. Helfert (San Mateo, CA) is an internationally recognized management consultant in corporate finance, strategic planning, and executive education in financial/economic decision making and shareholder value creation. Dr. Helfert is chairman and co-founder of Modernsoft, Inc., San Mateo, CA, developers of Financial Genome, advanced interactive financial analysis and business modeling software, which is complementary to Techniques of Financial Analysis.