07 How to Master Valuation Models

Nineteen valuation frameworks, each taught end to end — with the worked models to run them.

Valuation is the discipline of putting a defensible number on a business. This handbook teaches all nineteen frameworks in the Valuation category — one chapter each — from the intrinsic cash-flow models that value a company from first principles, through the market-based multiples that price it against its peers, to the asset-based and specialist methods used for holdings, distress and early-stage ventures. From the DCF and Comparable Companies to the Venture Capital Method, the Berkus Method and LBO Valuation.

What you get

The complete PDF handbook plus nineteen worked Excel models — one for every framework in the book. Blue input cells you change, formula cells that respond, and a Read-me tab on each, so you can run the numbers on your own assumptions.

How every chapter is built

Read one and you can build any. Each framework follows the same thirteen-section rhythm: the question it answers, what it is, who uses it, its anatomy, inputs and outputs, how to build it step by step, a worked example, strengths, limits and pitfalls, industry notes, how it connects to the other frameworks, modern relevance, using AI on it, and a practitioner’s checklist.

The nineteen frameworks

Discounted Cash Flow, Free Cash Flow to Firm, Free Cash Flow to Equity, the Dividend Discount Model, Comparable Companies, Trading Multiples, Precedent Transactions, the Control Premium, Net Asset Value, Liquidation Value, Replacement Cost, Sum-of-the-Parts, Break-up Analysis, the Probability-Weighted Expected Return Method, the Venture Capital Method, the Scorecard Method, the Berkus Method, Adjusted Present Value and LBO Valuation.

The learning path

The chapters are ordered as a single connected build, not an alphabetical list — from intrinsic value built from cash flows, to relative value read from the market, to asset-based and specialist methods for holdings, distress and early-stage companies.

Who it’s for

Investment bankers, equity analysts, private equity and venture investors, corporate development teams and CFOs who must arrive at a value and defend it in the boardroom or across the negotiating table.

How to use it

Work straight through to master the category, or jump to a single framework when you need it for live work.

Book 07 of the Business Framework Library, part of The Investment Banking Practitioner’s Handbook Series. Master this category on its own, or reach for the Business Framework Compendium when you want the one-page reference to all 467 frameworks.

By John Colley — Cambridge University MA · MBA with Distinction, Bayes Business School · 30+ years in investment banking, M&A and private equity.