Course Title: Value Investing: An Introduction Course Code: BUS 123 W Instructor Name: Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall

PRELIMINARY COURSE SYLLABUS
Course Title: Value Investing: An Introduction

Course Code: BUS 123 W
Instructor Name: Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall
Grade Options and Requirements:
No Grade Requested (NGR): Please follow the online curriculum. Please consider the online
video conferencing sessions to be optional.
Credit/No Credit (CR/NC): Please follow the online curriculum including the video conferencing
sessions (live or prerecorded).
Letter Grade: Please follow the online curriculum including the video conferencing sessions (live
or prerecorded). Using the framework developed in the course, please pick any one publicly-
traded company and determine a price at which you would buy its shares. Please turn in a
writeup of your selection of no more than two pages at the end of the course.
Weekly Outline
This course turns your attention towards companies that the best value investors in the world are
considering right now. Prior to each online video conferencing session, students will read several
pages from the annual report a company of current interest to perennially outperforming value
investors. Each online video conference will focus on the company, and will emphasize the tools
and principles of value investing naturally teased out by that particular case. Students should
prepare for each online video conference by collecting their views on that day's case.
Week 1: Fundamentals
The long-term superior returns of value investing versus other strategies; the inverse relationship
between performance and visibility; the core principle of value investing as the distinction
between price and value; rejection of the efficient market hypothesis; volatility; fear of loss; the
concept of intrinsic value; stocks versus other asset classes.
Week 2: Understanding the Business

Clearly describing the essence of a business as a prerequisite for further analysis; making things
as simple as possible but no simpler; defining a company by its customers, form, geography,
industry, products, and prominence; the concept of circle of competence.
Week 3: Accounting
Efficiently mastering annual reports; how a value investor reads income statements, cash flow
statements, and balance sheets; relevant differences between the Generally Accepted Accounting
Principles in the United States and International Financial Reporting Standards.
Week 4: Metrics
Calculating key figures from the financial statements such as operating earnings, free cash flow,
invested capital, book value, and tangible book value; the challenge of determining how much
cash is truly excess; counting shares correctly; why fully diluted shares tend to become shares
outstanding.
Week 5: Quantitative Analysis of Past Performance

Calculating return on invested capital (ROIC) and free cash flow return on invested capital
(FCFROIC); when ROIC and FCFROIC are more useful than return on equity, net profit margin,
and other common metrics; calculating growth per fully diluted share in operating earnings, free
cash flow, book value, and tangible book value; the debt-to-equity ratio; unfunded pension
obligations as debt; capitalizing operating leases.
Week 6: Strategic Analysis of Future Performance

Qualitative versus quantitative forecasting; precision versus accuracy; customer power, supplier
power, substitute threat, and startup threat from Porter’s Five Forces Analysis; customer and
supplier breadth analysis; moat identification; brand, cost structure, ingrainedness, switching
costs, government, and network as six potential sources of durable competitive advantage;
projecting growth objectively; testing for shareholder friendliness.
Week 7: Valuation
When enterprise value is more telling than market capitalization; calculating enterprise value;
calculating enterprise value to operating earnings (EV/OE), price to operating earnings
(MCAP/OE), and price over free cash flow (MCAP/FCF); the legacy metrics of price to book
(MCAP/BV) and price to tangible book (MCAP/TBV); the concept of margin of safety.
Week 8: Judgment and Behavior

Humans as built for fitness rather than truth; Robert Cialdini’s six reasons why people
erroneously say yes; Charlie Munger’s lecture on human misjudgment; rejecting investment
decisions born of affinity, authority, availability, cleverness, consensus, consistency, reciprocity;
scarcity, and uniqueness; the concept of Mr. Market; rejecting actions born of akrasia.
Week 9: Idea Generation

Efficiently identifying value investing opportunities through news, regulatory filings,
restructurings, small capitalization stocks, spinoffs, stock screens, and serendipity; the primacy
of not losing money; false negatives versus false positives; checklists.
Week 10: Differences Among Value Investors
The distinction between price and value as the sole requisite principle of value investing; valid
differences among value investors including choice of asset class, attention paid to company
quality, use of leverage, holding period, activism, idea complexity, use of shorting, and degree of
diversification.
© 2016 Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall

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PRELIMINARY COURSE SYLLABUS

Course Title: Value Investing: An Introduction

Grade Options and Requirements:

Week 2: Understanding the Business

Week 5: Quantitative Analysis of Past Performance

Week 6: Strategic Analysis of Future Performance

Week 8: Judgment and Behavior

Week 9: Idea Generation

© 2016 Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall

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