The path

Every valuation you will ever build rests on one idea: a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. This lecture makes that idea precise. By the end you will be able to move any cash flow… 45 minute read

Last time we treated the discount rate as given. Today we ask where it comes from. We start with the simplest risky asset, a bond: how to price it, what its yield means and how much its price moves… 45 minute read

Accounting is the language companies use to describe themselves. You cannot value a business, build a model or survive a technical interview without speaking it fluently. We start with the statement… 45 minute read

The income statement is a film of the year. The balance sheet is a photograph taken on the last day. It tells you what the company owns, what it owes and what is left for shareholders, and every line… 45 minute read

Profit is an opinion; cash is a fact. The cash flow statement reconciles the two, and it is where the three statements lock together. Master this lecture and you will answer the most common… 45 minute read

You now speak basic accounting. Today we cover the topics that separate a prepared candidate from a nervous one: deferred taxes, acquisitions and goodwill, stock-based compensation, stakes in other… 40 minute read

“What is this company worth?” has two correct answers, depending on who is asking. A lender, a shareholder and a buyer of the whole business each look at a different number. Today we separate the… 50 minute read

The quickest way to value a house is to ask what similar houses nearby sold for. Bankers do the same with companies. Relative valuation is less elegant than a DCF, but it is what markets actually do… 50 minute read

Comparables tell you what the market pays. A discounted cash flow tells you what a business is worth on its own fundamentals. It is the most important model in finance and the one interviewers ask… 50 minute read

Last lecture we discounted a company's cash flows at 9% and took the number on trust. Today we earn it. The discount rate is the return investors require for bearing the risk of those cash flows, and… 50 minute read

This is the job most of you want. An M&A banker helps one company buy another, or helps an owner sell. Today we build a full merger model in numbers, from the offer price to the buyer's earnings per… 60 minute read

A leveraged buyout is a house bought with a large mortgage, where the house pays its own mortgage. Private equity funds have built a trillion-dollar industry on this idea. Today you will learn to… 50 minute read

Companies need money to grow, to buy, or sometimes to survive. Investment banks raise it in two markets, equity and debt, and each has its own products, prices and rules. Today we tour both: how a… 50 minute read

You now know the material. A technical interview tests something slightly different: whether you can explain it clearly, quickly and correctly while someone watches and pushes back. This lecture is… 55 minute read

Technical skill gets you through the door. Whether you get the offer often depends on the other half of the interview: are you motivated, will you be good to work with at two in the morning, and do… 60 minute read

A mine is a wasting asset. What it is worth depends on its stage, and each stage has its own buyers, funders and valuation methods. 12 minute read

All of mining M&A rests on one quantity: the metal that can be extracted at a profit. Reporting codes govern how it is published. 14 minute read

A technical report often runs to several hundred pages, but the code fixes its structure. Knowing where to look saves days of due diligence. 13 minute read

The metal price is the single variable that moves a mine’s value most. It is set differently for each metal. 13 minute read

A mine has a finite life. It is valued first by discounting its cash flows to depletion, then cross-checked against multiples. 15 minute read

A mine model starts from the mine plan and works down to free cash flow, year by year, until the reserves run out. 14 minute read

Building a mine costs from a few hundred million to several billion dollars before the first revenue. The funding package almost always combines several instruments. 15 minute read

Due diligence checks that the metal exists, that it can be mined at the planned cost, and that nothing in the contracts, permits or relations with the state will capture the value. 13 minute read

The drivers are those of any M&A. Technical review, the legal structures of the mining exchanges and government approvals make it a discipline of its own. 16 minute read

A mine cannot move. For decades it stays exposed to its host state, its neighbours and a geology that always differs a little from the model. 12 minute read

Newmont’s acquisition of Newcrest, completed in 2023, brings together most of the course: tier-one assets, a raised offer, a scheme of arrangement, share consideration and disposals afterwards. 10 minute read

The trader that bought the miner. Glencore already owned about 34% of Xstrata; turning that stake into control took fifteen months, a raised offer, a shareholder revolt over bonuses and a forced sale… 10 minute read

In six months, Barrick merged with Randgold at no premium, bid for Newmont at no premium, then settled for a joint venture that captured the synergies without a takeover. 9 minute read

The largest mining approach in a decade failed less on price than on structure. BHP wanted Anglo American’s copper, not its platinum or its South African iron ore. 9 minute read

After fending off BHP, Anglo American chose its own partner: a copper-focused merger of equals with Teck, built around two neighbouring mines in northern Chile. 10 minute read