ACCT41015: FINANCIAL STATEMENT ANALYSIS

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• Financial Accounting and Reporting (ACCT40315)

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• This module has been designed to extend students knowledge of financial statements. Students are expected to demonstrate critical understanding of, and ability to apply, financial statement analysis to assess corporate performance, risk, growth potential, future prospects, and value.

• Review of key financial statement items and horizontal versus vertical analyses
• Analysis of financial satements to assess a firm's business performance, risks, and future prospects
• The application of financial statement analysis for the valuation of a firm's equity
• Financial reporting quality and accounting manipulation
• The role of earnings management in equity valuation
• Financial analysts' earnings forecasts
• Analysis of corporate reporting and disclosures to assess a firm's performance in environmental, social, governance (ESG) aspects as well as sustainable development goals (SDG)
• Sentiment/Linguistic analysis of corporate ESG reporting
• Content & Sentiment analysis of corporate ESG and SDG reporting

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Upon completion of the module students should have an advanced knowledge and critical understanding of:
• the importance and concepts of corporate financial reporting;
• how firms create value and how the values are reflected in the financial statements;
• the fundamental models of corporate valuation and their relationship with published financial and non-financial data;
• the essential requirements of accounting treatments for some important items in financial statement, and relate these requirements to the assessment of a firm's financial reporting quality and the likelihood and degree of a firm's manipulating accounting figures to mislead financial statement users;
• the information needs of management for control and decision making;
• the information needs of a firm's stakeholders for assessing its performance in environmental, social, and governance aspects and its potential for long-term sustainable development.

Subject-specific Skills:

• By the end of this module students should have acquired:
• the main financial analysis techniques used by analysts and application of these tools to published financial statements to assess corporate performance, risk, and prospects, and to estimate corporate value for investment decision-making.
• the techniques used to assess how firms create value and how the values are reflected in the financial statements.

Key Skills:

• Written, Oral and Interpersonal Communication;
• Planning, Organising and Time Management;
• Problem Solving and Analysis;
• Using Initiative;
• Numeracy;
• Computer Literacy.

• The module will be delivered by a combination of lectures, seminars and guided reading appropriate for conveying the specialist knowledge and skills set out in the learning outcomes.
• The formative assessment will be a group assignment.
• The summative assessment is an individual written assignment

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