Advanced Certificate in Financial Modelling & Valuation

The methods a deal team uses to value a business, and how to reconcile them. You bridge enterprise value to value per share, normalise earnings, build trading comparables, forecast free cash flow, build a sourced cost of capital and complete a DCF with terminal value worked out two ways. Then you value control with UK precedent transactions, take a private company sale to the cash the sellers receive, solve a leveraged buyout for what a buyer could pay and pull it all into one range on a football field. The capstone is a full valuation report, with a recorded walkthrough, on a brief you choose.

It's an advanced course. It assumes you can build and balance a linked three-statement model with a debt schedule, data tables, NPV and IRR, and takes valuation from the ground up within that. If that describes you, you're ready.

We strongly recommend it, or equivalent hands-on experience. This course starts from a finished three-statement model and spends its time on the valuation you build on top.

No. The course works from free public sources: annual and half-year reports, takeover announcements and scheme documents, Companies House filings and Bank of England gilt yields. You learn where every terminal number comes from before you ever rely on one. You do need desktop Excel, through Microsoft 365 or Excel 2024.

This course values whole businesses the way corporate finance, deal and investment teams do. Investing Fundamentals is about investing your own money: ISAs, pensions, funds and risk. If you want to manage your savings, it's the better fit.

Yes, alongside fictional ones. You bridge a real listed company's figures note by note, pull deal multiples from real UK takeover documents, and one capstone brief values a company that has already been taken over, so you can compare your range with the price actually paid. The private company cases are fictional, because real ones don't publish what a valuer needs.

No. You learn how professionals estimate what a business is worth, and nothing in the course is a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Real-company work either bridges published figures or values companies already taken over, and the course explains why publishing an opinion on a listed share's value needs care.

Yes. Pass the final assessment and you get an OBA advanced certificate of completion that an employer can verify online. It isn't a professional qualification such as the CFA Program, the ACA or the ICAEW Corporate Finance qualification, though the course explains where they fit. Your valuation report and walkthrough are the work an employer will actually look at.

Download the free info pack first. It walks you through every module, what you'll build and what you need before you start, so you can enrol knowing exactly what you're getting. If you'd like to talk it through, get in touch and we'll help you choose.