Reading Financial Statements Shouldn't Feel Like Decoding Hieroglyphics
I've spent fifteen years watching smart business owners make costly decisions because they couldn't quite grasp what their financial statements were actually telling them. Balance sheets, income statements, cash flow reports—they're not meant to be mysterious. Our autumn 2025 program teaches you to read these documents the way accountants do, spotting trends and red flags before they become problems.
View September Program
Three Core Skills That Actually Matter
Forget memorizing accounting formulas. These are the practical abilities that change how you understand business performance.
Ratio Analysis
Quick ratios, current ratios, debt-to-equity—these aren't just numbers. They tell you if a company can pay its bills next month or if it's borrowing too much. You'll learn which ratios matter most for different industries and what the numbers actually mean in real scenarios.
Trend Recognition
One quarter's results don't tell the full story. We teach you how to compare statements across multiple periods, spotting patterns that indicate growth, stagnation, or decline. It's about seeing the trajectory, not just the snapshot.
Cash Flow Tracking
Profit on paper means nothing if the cash isn't there. Understanding the statement of cash flows—where money actually comes from and goes to—is often the difference between a healthy business and one that's struggling despite showing profit.
What You'll Actually Learn to Do
This isn't theory class. By the end of our program, you'll be able to pick up any set of financial statements and understand what's happening with that business.
You'll know how to compare companies in the same industry, evaluate investment opportunities, and—most importantly—understand your own company's financial position well enough to have intelligent conversations with your accountant or CFO.
- Interpret balance sheets and identify hidden liabilities
- Analyze income statements for real profitability
- Evaluate cash flow patterns and liquidity concerns
- Compare financial performance across time periods
- Assess financial health using industry benchmarks
Program Structure for Autumn 2025
Twelve weeks, one evening per week. We keep groups small so everyone gets attention. Classes start September 2025 in central Taichung.
Foundation Phase
First four weeks cover the basics—reading balance sheets, understanding income statements, and getting comfortable with financial terminology. We use real company statements, not textbook examples.
Analysis Techniques
Weeks five through eight focus on ratio analysis, trend identification, and comparative analysis. You'll work through case studies from Taiwanese companies across different sectors.
Advanced Interpretation
The next three weeks tackle complex scenarios—spotting financial manipulation, understanding consolidation, and analyzing companies with international operations.
Practical Application
Final week is dedicated to analyzing statements you bring in—your own company, potential investments, or competitors. Real problems, real solutions.
Kieran Pembroke
After working in corporate finance for twelve years and teaching for another three, I've seen what happens when people try to run businesses without understanding their numbers. This program exists to fix that gap.
Why This Approach Works
Most financial analysis courses either assume you already know accounting or they dumb everything down until it's useless. We start with what you actually need to understand and build from there.
The classes are small—never more than twelve people—because learning to read financial statements requires feedback. You need someone to tell you when you're misinterpreting a number or missing an important detail.
Every session includes real statement analysis. No theoretical examples. You'll work with actual financial reports from public companies, learning to spot the same patterns and issues that professional analysts look for.