I welcome you all in the final episode of this course.
And whenever we reach this nice point,
it's time to draw some conclusions.
And I specifically prepared them for all of you in these pages,
just for you to be able to take a look at
that and think and recall something what we have done so far.
First of all, I wrapped up financial accounting at the very end of the third week.
So, here on the first page,
I briefly sort of recalling that.
We said that financial accounting is a language and set of standards that allows us to
better obtain these inputs that we need in valuation and financial accounting,
specifically the accruals part that contributes to better forecasting of cash flows.
And also, the special part of
financial accounting that deals with the financial statement analysis,
it reveals trends and signals performance.
Now, we see that again for our pragmatic approach
in how we can use that for valuation and for tracing and then catching a value,
we can see that if we speak this language fluently,
that allows us to come up with better inputs,
better forecasts, and also seeing these trends,
we again can fine tune our corporate finance models that lead to finding this value.
And therefore, this is all kind of equipping us with some weapons if you will.
And now, this is also the time to say
a few words about how managerial accounting helps us.
And here, we have to go back and recall that Brealey & Myers
in their Corporate Finance book oftentimes groped
this idea that the project is not a black box.
In our analysis of this investment project,
in terms of valuation,
we have to actually not only limit ourselves of what is
observed from the outside and this is a scope of financial accounting as we will know,
but also we have to go inside.
And this is exactly what is achieved by the understanding and
proper application of major ideas and concepts of managerial accounting.
We know that managerial account deals with costs and cost drivers,
that the activity-based costing,
links cost to and sometimes revenues too to activities,
and the key stories of managerial accounting focuses on relevance that,
that is a bridge to corporate finance that is very, very clear.
Here, we can say that this part of managerial accounting,
that sort of cost accounting if you will in its clear form,
that contributes to the better understanding of value drivers.
So again, better understanding.
So, it's not only the numbers that we take from financial accounting,
but we also see what,
how these numbers should be thought of and how sometimes they can be even
adjusted to come up with a better valuation of a project or a company.
And then the second part of
managerial accounting approach was dealing with budgeting and responsibility accounting.
And here we said that this is the area in which we see this
pronounced links between costs and people in the more direct way.
We said that although it is indeed
the story of people versus numbers and the other way around if you will,
but it is the approaches of budgeting and responsibility accounting that
allows to not only achieve these links,
but also to positively contribute to achieving results because remember,
budgets are planned so this is a looking forward approach.
And responsibility accounting allows you to see who knows best,
who is the most informed,
who can contribute better to the higher probability of actually
achieving the bottom line result that will
be at least no worse than they had been planned.
So, all that leads us to some bigger statements if you will.
We can say that accounting in general allows us to fill formulas with
actual numbers and understanding accounting
allows us to use corporate finance models more effectively.
Again, you can say, "Well,
this is sort of a minor goal."
Well, yes or no.
Because as I was saying before,
no one promised to you that you will become
the specialist in advance of staying of accounting procedures.
But, we have so far reached quite an advance understanding of
the core of these issues and how they influence other important areas in finance.
And that in itself leads us to
the following final statement before we
wrap up this course completely and this is what we will do with all that.
And we can say that to the extent,
accounting is instrumental in our analysis of value creation.
Now, it's time to combine our knowledge of capital markets, corporate finance,
and accounting and apply that all to the analysis of value creation
in some areas that provide the most dramatic examples,
the most acute cases.
And this is the area of mergers and acquisitions,
that will be the scope of our next course,
the final course of this specialization.
Now, the story in M&A is special.
And although we see some of these transactions and the results of them as fairy tales,
we have to remember that although most fairy tales have a happy end,
but then, there are certain obstacles on this path.
Again, when the clock strikes at midnight, then Cinderella escapes,
so does value in many cases of M&As.
I thank you all for having stayed with me in this accounting course.
I wish you good luck with your assignments in respect to
this course and I will see you all in our M&A course,
the final course of this specialization.
