Financial Forecasting: Interpretation & Misinterpretation

This program focuses on interpreting income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow forecasts and the need to identify and grasp the underlying assumptions that drive the numbers.  Participants learn the tools of pro forma financial analysis. Their use sheds light on liquidity and profit margins – not to mention asset utilization and debt service.  Hence, the door opens wide to raise the right questions and identify key issues in assessing market and financial performance as well as developing strategies to keep the firm on sound financial footing.  Valuation models tied to company exits and capital raises are also under the lens. Participants learn that financial projections and valuation are a two-way mirror.      

Dale Falcinelli, Senior Professor of Practice, and Richard Kollender, Lehigh adjunct professor, are the instructional team who deliver this program.

The creator of Lehigh’s MBA entrepreneurship concentration, Dale brings many decades of management consulting and investment banking into the classroom, having served hundreds of CEOs and boards of emerging growth and early stage companies.  He is well-known in the venture capital community and has lectured at the Wharton School in Philadelphia and San Francisco campuses.  An undergraduate and graduate alumnus of Lehigh, Dale is the recipient of many awards and is recognized by Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern PA for his contributions to the Lehigh Valley business community.  He has served on numerous corporate boards and appeared on Fox Business, A&E, and PBS.            

Richard Kollender is nationally-recognized in healthcare. He remains a partner with a prominent East Coast-focused venture fund with over $700 million in committed capital.  In recent times, Richard held top C-level and board positions with emerging growth companies including helping to architect a freshly-minted IPO.  Richard is presently CBO and CFO of Reaction Biology, a high profile contract laboratory research firm that supports and advances drug discovery by major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Richard began his career as a practicing CPA with KPMG Peat Marwick. He earned a B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College and holds both an M.B.A. and a Certificate Degree in Health Administration & Policy [with honors] from the University of Chicago.

Participants experience a fast-moving no holds-barred 2-day journey that gives weight to the analysis and metrics that explain company performance and valuation. The program is built around five key questions: 

[1] How do I interpret financial statements from an acquirer/investor perspective?

[2] How do I isolate and interpret the key assumptions that explain financial projections?

[3] How do I make use of simple pro forma analysis to arrive at major conclusions? 

[4] How do I apply valuation models that govern the sale of a company or a capital raise?  

[5] How do I strategize a company exit?

The format is 100% interactive and relies heavily on case study and illustration.  The approach is practical and hands-on to stimulate learning for both financial and non-financial executives.    

This program is designed for C-level executives and senior managers of emerging growth companies and founders of new enterprises who must work with financial projections and deal with valuation as part of the Executive Certificate in Corporate Entrepreneurship.