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Learn Corporate Finance

How companies decide what to invest in and how to pay for it.

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Corporate finance studies the financial decisions inside a company: which projects to fund, how to raise the money and how to return cash to owners. Its toolkit starts with the time value of money and grows into net present value, internal rate of return, the weighted average cost of capital and theories of capital structure such as Modigliani and Miller. It is the backbone of investment banking, FP&A and CFO work. Learnr builds a personalized corporate finance course of short lessons with worked problems you solve step by step, at your own pace.

How to learn Corporate Finance, step by step

Drill time value of money problems. Compute present and future values of single sums, annuities and perpetuities until the formulas feel natural. Nearly every later idea, from bond pricing to project valuation, is a discounting problem in disguise.
Evaluate projects with NPV and IRR. Take a sample project with upfront cost and yearly cash flows, then calculate NPV, IRR and payback. Find a case where IRR and NPV disagree, such as mutually exclusive projects of different sizes, and learn why NPV usually wins.
Learn how risk sets the discount rate. Study the capital asset pricing model, beta and the equity risk premium, then combine debt and equity costs into WACC. Seeing how a higher rate shrinks NPV ties risk directly to investment decisions.
Explore capital structure. Start with the Modigliani-Miller result that, in a frictionless world, financing mix does not change firm value. Then add taxes, bankruptcy costs and agency problems to see why real companies care about leverage.
Model working capital. Calculate days sales outstanding, days inventory and days payable for a real company, then its cash conversion cycle. This shows how a profitable business can still be squeezed for cash as it grows.
Practice with short problem sets. Corporate finance is learned by solving, not reading. Daily Learnr lessons with quick calculations keep formulas fresh, and pairing them with a spreadsheet builds the habits analysts use every day.

What you'll learn

Discount cash flows and compute net present value
Compare NPV, IRR and payback period for capital budgeting
Estimate a weighted average cost of capital
Explain the trade-offs between debt and equity financing
Analyze working capital and the cash conversion cycle

What's inside your Corporate Finance course

A sample path Learnr builds for Corporate Finance. Your real course adapts to your goal and level.

1. Goals of the firm and the time value of money
2. Capital budgeting: NPV, IRR and payback
3. Risk, return and the cost of capital
4. Capital structure and leverage
5. Payout policy: dividends and buybacks
6. Working capital and short-term finance

How long does it take to learn Corporate Finance?

A standard introductory course covers this material over a semester, roughly 3 to 4 months at 5 to 8 hours a week. With strong algebra and accounting knowledge you can move faster; advanced valuation and capital markets topics take longer.

What you need before you start

Solid algebra, comfort with spreadsheets and a working knowledge of the three financial statements. Basic statistics helps once you reach risk, beta and expected returns.

Common mistakes to avoid

Discounting accounting profit instead of cash flow, or mixing nominal cash flows with a real discount rate.
Relying on IRR alone to rank projects, even though it can give multiple answers or mislead when projects differ in scale.
Treating sunk costs as relevant to a new decision. Only future incremental cash flows should affect whether a project goes ahead.

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Corporate Finance questions, answered

What is the difference between corporate finance and accounting?

Accounting records and reports what has happened using set rules. Corporate finance uses that information, plus forecasts, to make forward-looking decisions about investment, financing and payouts.

Is corporate finance hard?

The math rarely goes beyond algebra and some statistics, but the ideas require careful reasoning about cash, timing and risk. Working many practice problems makes it far more approachable.