Corporate Finance #4 Leverage & Break-Even Analysis
What you'll learn
- Be able to explain the concept of leverage and why it is important
- Be able to use break even analysis for decision making
- Explain the concepts of degree of operating leverage, financial leverage, & combined leverage
- Calculate the break even point
- Calculate the cash break even point
- Use nonlinear breakeven analysis
Requirements
- A general understanding of financial concepts
Description
In this course we will cover the concepts of leverage and break-even analysis from a corporate finance perspective.
Leverage is a critical component of decision making in corporate finance and is an area of debate as to the optimal amount of leverage. Finding the best level of leverage may allow a business to grow much faster.
We will discuss the concepts of operating leverage, financial leverage, and combined leverage and include practical practice problems related to these critical concepts.
Break-even analysis is a fundamental tool in decision making. Learners will understand the concept of break-even analysis, including the tool of breaking costs up by their behavior, labeling them fixed costs and variable costs. Labeling costs by category of fixed and variable can seem unnatural at first, because we often label costs by function, what the cost is designed to do, like operating expenses and cost of goods sold. Labeling cost by behavior helps us see how the cost changes with relation to increases in production level, a useful concept for projecting into the future.
The course will show how to calculate the break-even point and the cash break-even point. We will also discuss the concept of nonlinear break-even analysis.
This course will include many practice problems, often including downloadable Excel worksheets. Each Excel worksheet will have at least to tabs, one with the answer, one with a preformatted worksheet that learners can populate along with step-by-step instructional videos.
Who this course is for:
- Students
- Business professionals
Instructor
- 4.4 Instructor Rating
- 38,623 Reviews
- 718,808 Students
- 131 Courses
Through working with students from many different schools, Mr. Steele has learned best practices for helping people understand accounting fast. Learning new skills and finding the best way to share knowledge with people who can benefit from it is a passion of his.
Mr. Steele has experience working as a practicing Certified Public Accountant (CPA), an accounting and business instructor, and curriculum developer. He has enjoyed putting together quality tools to improve learning and has been teaching, making instructional resources, and building curriculum since 2009. He has been a practicing CPA since 2005. Mr. Steele is a practicing CPA, has a Certified Post-Secondary Instructor (CPI) credential, a Master of Science in taxation from Golden Gate University, a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Economics with an emphasis in accounting from The University of California Santa Barbara, and a Global Management Accounting Designation (CGMA) from The American Institute of CPA (AICPA).
Mr. Steele has also authored five books that can be found on Amazon or in audiobook format on Audible. He has developed bestselling courses in accounting topics including financial accounting and QuickBooks accounting software.
In addition to working as an accountant, teaching, and developing courses Mr. Steele has helped create an accounting website at accountinginstruction, a YouTube channel called Accounting Instruction, Help, and How Too, and has developed supplemental resources including a Facebook Page, Twitter Page, and Podcasts that can be found on I-tunes, Stitcher, or Soundcloud. Mr. Steele's teaching philosophy is to make content applicable, understandable, and accessible.
Adult learners are looking for application when they learn new skills. In other words, learners want to be able to apply skills in the real world to help their lives. Mr. Steele’s formal accounting education, practical work experience, and substantial teaching experience allow him to create a curriculum that combines traditional accounting education with practical knowledge and application. He accomplishes the goals of making accounting useful and applicable by combining theory with real-world software like Excel and QuickBooks.
Many courses teach QuickBooks data entry or Excel functions but are not providing the real value learners want. Real value is a result of learning technical skills like applications, in conjunction with specific goals, like accounting goals, including being able to interpret the performance of a business.
Mr. Steele makes knowledge understandable by breaking down complex concepts into smaller units with specific objectives and using step by step learning processes to understand each unit. Many accounting textbooks cram way too much information into a course, making it impossible to understand any unit fully. By breaking the content down into digestible chunks, we can move forward much faster.
Mr. Steele also makes use of color association in both presentations and Excel worksheets, a learning tool often overlooked in the accounting field, but one that can vastly improve the speed and comprehension of learning accounting concepts.
The material is also made understandable through the application of concepts learned. Courses will typically demonstrate the accounting concepts and then provide an Excel worksheet or practice problems to work through the concepts covered. The practice problems will be accompanied by an instructional video to work through the problem in step by step format. Excel worksheets will be preformatted, usually including an answer tab that shows the completed problem, and a practice tab where learners can complete the problem along with a step by step presentation video.
Mr. Steele makes learning accounting accessible by making use of technology and partnering with teaching platforms that have a vision of spreading knowledge like Udemy.