Business Analysis and Valuation - Using Financial Statements, Text and Cases

“This is an excellent text which tackles the real issues of accounting analysis and valuation. The conversion to IFRS has been done well. The key strengths are the high level of explanation and the use of real life examples, as well as the fact that the text tackles real problems of forecasting, analysis and valuation in a way which no other text I know does.”

Simon Pallett, University of Newcastle

“All needed modifications have been comprehensively and excellently done. These modifications are appropriate, making the book attractive for European readers.”

Lakshmanan Shivakumar, London Business School

“What makes this book attractive for my course is that it continues where other textbooks stop: it focuses on the link between accounting figures and corporate strategy.”

Ignace de Beelde, Ghent University

“I think that the new edition has succeeded in creating an alternative for PHB for European students. While keeping the original text intact, the authors have managed to give it a European tone.”

Sanjay W. Bissessur, University of Amsterdam Business School

Krishna G. Palepu joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1983. He has taught courses in finance & control financial statement analysis & competitive strategy in the Harvard MBA and Executive Educations program.

This review applies to the edition WITH CASES. This isn't recommended for anyone who is just starting out with choosing investments. Beginners might be better off with a more general overview of financial statement analysis (FSA) like Higgins' "Analysis of Financial Statements" or Fraser and Omriston's "Understanding Financial Statements".
This was one of two textbooks used in a financial statement analysis course I took for my MBA. Most chapters are down-to-earth and as a whole the book is well-written.
The other text we used was Penman's "Financial Statement Analysis and Security Valuation" which was also a great resource as far as gaining a basic understanding of the mechanics of financial statements and how to build a valuation model.
I contrast the two books because while Penman provides a run-down of several different models analysts can use (and does a good job of arguing for the Residual Income Model of valuation model as being the best), Palepu delves into the implications of companies' choices of accounting methods and provides more insight into what different kinds of businesses should look like in terms of their financial statements.
The cases at the end of each chapter add a lot of value to the text because they get students to focus on the specific issues detailed in each chapter. By picking apart different companies' financial statements we learned to use financial statements to assess the success or failure of companies' efforts to carry out their business strategies.
I rate it "Good - 4 stars"

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This book is also a bestseller in Japan. Here someone called it "The only textbook now available that broadly explains accounting figures in the valuation model of the firm". This is a good book for beginners. Although the contents might be somewhat easy, the order in which it is written is very meaningful. You will probably have read everything in this book somewhere else, but certainly not in this order ! The importance of the ideas in this book go beyond its contents !!