WILEY Cash Flow Analysis and Forecasting: The Definitive Guide to Understanding and Using Published Cash Flow Data

Profit is nice but cash is critical to really understanding an investment and the template provided by the author shows you the way. The author walks us through a process of converting a normal cash flow statement into a better understood template format. Once converted to the template almost anyone with common business sense can understand how cash is flowing thru a company. The template allows an investor to to see how much cash a company is actually generating, where the money goes (such as interest, taxes, capex, investments) and to see how it is financed (debt, equity or cash on hand). The author also provides us with analysis of the template format for each phase of the business life cycle (startup, growth, mature, declining) that all companies eventually experience. It will help if you know your way around a cash flow statement - but it is not required. If you don't, you may need to put in a little work to follow the examples. However, if you do put in the effort, you will find the exercise well worth it and it will be of immense help if you are making your own investment decisions. This is really an excellent book and if I could recommend only one book on investment financial analysis this would be it.

I was surprised with the number of errors that were present in this book - numerical, concpetual, and grammatical (even has misspelled words). The objective of this book was to be the definitive source on analyzing and forecasting cash flows of a business, but the fact that so many errors exist detracts from the book's ability to meet this objective. In my opinion, there are better alternatives than this book if you're attempting to improve your analytical knowledge of cash flow statements.

While there are a lot of books in the market that teach you the philosophy of value investing and strategy, there are very very few that actually guide you in a systematic way to analyze businesses. I've read around 60 investment books in the past seven months, and I would definitely say that this book has to be right at the top of the list in terms of the amount of actual analytical skills that it teaches you to study businesses. In fact, I gained many times more from this book than from McKinsey's or Aswath Damodaran's famous books on valuation (which are worth reading nevertheless). While the book concentrates solely on the cash flow statement, with little attention to the balance sheet or the income statement, I don't think it's a significant drawback considering the fact that 'cash is king'. If this book doesn't deserve a five star, nothing else does. Read it!

This is one of the two best books on cash flow analysis I've seen, alongside Creative Cash Flow Reporting: Uncovering Sustainable Financial Performance . It is well-written, clear and covers all stages of business. An excellent book. Recommended!

Some great practical examples in here and very well organized. Readers can drop-in on sections for a refresher or to focus on specific learning points. On the content: the conventional way of thinking about cash flows isn't as practically useful as it could be. The traditional accounting approach is very retrospective and seems to get bogged down in form rather than function. The author draws on his years of experience to try and change that. He presents a very useful framework to try and re-think the whole point of cash flow data from an analysis perspective. If readers don't adopt his exact template, he provides a sufficient degree of surrounding discussion to provide a foundation for creating ones own. Cash flows are arguably the most significant driver of value creation, yet analyzing them seems to be under-emphasized in practice. By reading this book and working through the exercises, readers will be ahead of the pack.