--- title: Financial Modeling description: Financial modeling is the practice of building spreadsheet representations of a company's financial performance. Learners will understand how to forecast future revenue, value assets, and build dynamic models to support corporate decision-making. category: business-entrepreneurship subcategory: finance difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/financial-modeling --- # Financial Modeling Financial modeling is the practice of building spreadsheet representations of a company's financial performance. Learners will understand how to forecast future revenue, value assets, and build dynamic models to support corporate decision-making. ## Available Resources 5 Books • 3 Courses • 3 Websites ## Courses ### 1. Financial Modeling for Beginners Learn financial modeling fundamentals with this free course from BIWS. Build practical skills and start your finance career today! **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://breakingintowallstreet.com/kb/ **Tags:** financial-modeling, investment-banking, valuation, excel, interview-prep ### 2. Wall Street Prep Free Project Finance Course (Heathrow Airport Case Study) **Author:** Wall Street Prep Walkthrough of a project finance model for a Heathrow Airport case study, with a downloadable Excel template. Covers capital expenditure phasing, operating cash flows, debt drawdown and repayment mechanics, and the DSCR and LLCR coverage ratios lenders use. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.wallstreetprep.com/knowledge/demystifying-project-finance/ **Tags:** project-finance, dscr, financial-modeling, infrastructure-finance, excel ### 3. Financial Modeling and Valuation An eight-module Excel walkthrough that forecasts revenue, operating expenses, depreciation, working capital, and financing for a case-study company, then values it using discounted cash flow and trading comparables. You end with a complete three-statement model. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/financial-modeling-valuation-analyze-forecast **Tags:** courses, business-entrepreneurship, finance ## Websites ### 1. Aswath Damodaran's Website Aswath Damodaran's NYU faculty page, hosting his lecture slides, webcasts, valuation spreadsheets, and annually updated datasets on equity risk premiums, betas, and cost of capital by industry. The data feeds real discounted cash flow work. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ **Tags:** valuation, cost of capital, equity risk premium, datasets, DCF ### 2. Macabacus Learn: Operating, Merger and LBO Model Tutorials Free step-by-step walkthroughs for building an operating model, a public-company merger model and an LBO model in Excel, plus downloadable DCF, merger, short-form and long-form LBO and IPO templates using banking formatting conventions. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://macabacus.com/learn **Tags:** financial-modeling, merger-model, lbo-model, excel, dcf ### 3. CFA Institute Official site of the body that sets and administers the CFA exams, publishing the curriculum topic areas and weights, exam policies, sample questions, the Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct, and research. Candidates use it to plan study against the tested content. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://cfainstitute.org **Tags:** cfa-program, cfa-exam, investment-management, professional-ethics ## Books ### 1. Investment Banking: Valuation, LBOs, M&A, and IPOs (3rd Edition) **Author:** Joshua Rosenbaum, Joshua Pearl The standard practitioner text on banker valuation work: comparable companies, precedent transactions, DCF, LBO, merger and IPO analysis, worked step by step. The third edition ships with six downloadable Excel model templates matching the chapters. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119867878?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** valuation, comparable-companies, dcf, lbo-model, mergers-acquisitions, ipo ### 2. Investment Banking: Valuation, LBOs, M&A, and IPOs (3rd Edition) **Author:** Joshua Rosenbaum, Joshua Pearl Two practising bankers walk step by step through comparable companies analysis, precedent transactions, DCF and LBO analysis exactly as they are built on Wall Street, including the accounting adjustments, calendarisation and output formats deal teams expect. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119706181?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** investment-banking, valuation, comparable-companies, precedent-transactions, dcf, lbo ### 3. Financial Modeling **Author:** Simon Benninga Benninga's textbook builds finance theory directly in Excel, covering portfolio models, cost of capital, bond duration, option pricing, and Monte Carlo simulation. Working through it leaves you able to implement standard valuation and portfolio methods yourself. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262026287?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, business-entrepreneurship, finance ### 4. Financial Analysis and Modeling Using Excel and VBA **Author:** Chandan Sengupta An 800-page Wiley guide that reviews the underlying finance theory, then develops models in Excel and automates them with VBA across time value, bond pricing, portfolio, and simulation problems. Suited to readers wanting programming control over spreadsheets. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/047027560X?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** financial-modeling, excel, vba, bond-pricing, portfolio-optimization ### 5. Building Financial Models **Author:** John Tjia Tjia builds a working projection model from the ground up, pairing accounting and finance fundamentals with Excel mechanics, discounted cash flow, and design principles for maintainable spreadsheets. You finish able to construct a three-statement corporate projection model. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071608893?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, business-entrepreneurship, finance --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/financial-modeling