Jed Neilson

ACCTG 481 – Fin Anal Eval Dec

An accounting based evaluation and decision making approach to analyzing financial statements by studying business and firm valuation. ACCTG 481 Financial Statement Analysis (3) The proposed course in financial statement analysis is structured to improve the student's ability to extract and interpret information from actual financial statements and to expose the student to how financial statement information is integrated into equity valuation and credit analysis. The course would not only rely upon textbook-based and lecture-based learning, but also emphasize case-based learning.The course will consist of two main sections. The first will deal with accounting and business analysis. This part will explore the types of financial information data typically available for publicly traded companies and introduce a model of the economic drivers of company performance. It would incorporate some technical accounting as well as some standards business economics/strategy concepts. Students will be forced to recast financial statements that they believe do not reflect the underlying economic state of the company. Financial reporting issues relating to revenue and expense recognition, leases and consolidations will be discussed.The other section of the course will deal with firm valuation. Students would be exposed to some standard approaches to equity valuation and the analysis activities underlying these approaches. Aspects of valuation that would be covered in this section of the course are financial ratio analysis, forecasting, pro-forma statements, cost of capital and valuation methods.The course will rely on lectures and extensive use of case studies.

ACCTG 597 – Special Topics

ACCTG 805 – Applied ACCTG & FIN Analytics

ACCTG 805 impounds knowledge gained from prior coursework and serves as the culminating experience for students enrolled in the Master of Accounting in Accounting Analytics (MAA) program. This course provides an advanced application of the Python programming language to the analysis of large-scale datasets which lie at the intersection of accounting and finance. Students will build upon prior work with the Python programming language and acquire more advanced syntax and building blocks for use in Python. They will also build upon prior work with the Extract-Transform-Load process and learn how to acquire, import, modify, join, summarize, visualize, and analyze datasets in order to better understand the relationships between accounting information and capital markets such as how stock prices respond to earnings information, what financial statement information best predicts accounting irregularities, and how eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) can be harnessed to make more uniform comparisons across companies. Prior work with designing and using relational databases will be enhanced in this course, with a continued emphasis on using data in an ethical manner. The course will be structured around hands-on programming sessions and accompanied by individual assignments to gauge students¿ mastery of the Python language and multiple projects built around using data to gain insights about the real-world relationships between accounting information and capital market outcomes. Specific topics will vary based on current issues and instructor interest.

ACCTG 881 – Fin Stat Anlys

Analysis of financial reports to identify business strategy, assess performance and economic standing, and value claims.