Top 5 Financial Analyst Interview Questions & Answers (Easy to Hard)

In this video, we'll walk you through the common financial analyst interview questions that we have encountered while interviewing for financial analyst roles at Tesla, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and other top companies! This will cover important questions on the time value of money, financial statement fundamentals, financial ratios, valuation methods, and more.
We'll cover these common interview questions:
1. $10,000 today or $10,000 in the future?
2. How can a company with positive EBITDA have negative net income?
3. What are some financial ratios you would use to measure the health and risk of a company?
4. What are different methods that you could use to value a company?
5. Should the weighted average cost of capital be higher for a company with a $100M Market Cap or a $100B Market Cap?
6. Bonus: How many cups of coffee does Starbucks sell in the US each day?
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CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Introduction
0:17 - Question 1
1:17 - Question 2
2:29 - Question 3
4:05 - Question 4
5:39 - Question 5
6:29 - Bonus Question

Пікірлер: 54

  • @paulhan7770
    @paulhan77705 ай бұрын

    I'm more impressed with your not blinking skills than your financial skills. Holy Moly.

  • @Gbb93
    @Gbb9310 ай бұрын

    Great video. You’re very smart as well; good thinking process.

  • @devinmorton7390
    @devinmorton7390 Жыл бұрын

    This was beyond helpful! As a senior graduating in the Fall of this year I am preparing to apply for FT applications in August/September. So this video is giving me a great head start. Thank you again for providing content like this for FREE!

  • @brandonquach4265
    @brandonquach4265 Жыл бұрын

    more of these pls!

  • @GoldenGod69
    @GoldenGod693 ай бұрын

    Im taking a basic upper-division corporate finance class at my school... I love it. Thinking of switching to a finance degree from Business/Data analytics. The finance class I am in we have covered all these questions so far

  • @unbeatablesoul6562
    @unbeatablesoul65626 ай бұрын

    Thank you very much❤

  • @camlex6310
    @camlex6310 Жыл бұрын

    Really helpful!

  • @careerprinciples

    @careerprinciples

    Жыл бұрын

    Glad you found it helpful!

  • @filippofontana8413
    @filippofontana8413Ай бұрын

    Very nice video, I advice you to use the bottom up method rather than the top-down one when it comes to specific quests like the bonus one:)

  • @KenjiExplains
    @KenjiExplains Жыл бұрын

    Can you do part 2?

  • @careerprinciples

    @careerprinciples

    Жыл бұрын

    Noted! More videos coming!

  • @ashishsatdive1466

    @ashishsatdive1466

    Жыл бұрын

    @@careerprinciples That will be appreciated !!!

  • @tristanontheway
    @tristanontheway Жыл бұрын

    please do one of these episodes every month!

  • @careerprinciples

    @careerprinciples

    Жыл бұрын

    Noted, glad you found it helpful!

  • @user-oh3ht6qv8p

    @user-oh3ht6qv8p

    9 ай бұрын

    Please! This is soo great. You have an incredible gift to explain concepts simply and concisely.

  • @gopalkrusnajena7383
    @gopalkrusnajena73833 ай бұрын

    Bro im a student of 12th cbse commerce stream (in India) i can answer every question surprisingly 😀😊

  • @kad2ful
    @kad2fulАй бұрын

    Video was absolutely fantastic…however that last calculation included some wild assumptions😂

  • @melvinholmes8862
    @melvinholmes886210 ай бұрын

    I’m in a situation where I’m almost done with my degree but because I chose to do one of those pay as you go schools I can’t get my degree till it’s paid but I do get a completion letter. My question to is can I land an entry level position while I’m still paying off my degree?

  • @willzinner8813
    @willzinner8813 Жыл бұрын

    thank you sir

  • @careerprinciples

    @careerprinciples

    Жыл бұрын

    No problem Will!

  • @dohyun4787
    @dohyun4787 Жыл бұрын

    Can u do exel interview for finance analysist

  • @afrojchuahan8133
    @afrojchuahan81339 ай бұрын

    Please make it

  • @brandonquach4265
    @brandonquach4265 Жыл бұрын

    An investment analyst interview question I got was: How much would you charge for insurance of shipping the Mona Lisa to New York?

  • @careerprinciples

    @careerprinciples

    Жыл бұрын

    Interesting interview question! Thanks for sharing.

  • @megapuspitap
    @megapuspitap21 күн бұрын

    Hi thank you for nice video. 7 years ago I had market sizing question from a consulting company. It was exactly the same questions but the sales in my country. I did the approach you mentioned. However, the interviewer keep questioning me where do you get the population number? Where did you get 75% assumptions? What is the reason behind that 75%? And basically he keep questioning the validity behind the assumptions. So i am wondering how exactly do we need to answer it?

  • @daisyboisy
    @daisyboisyАй бұрын

    For Q5 should the WACC be higher for a 100 million company or a 100 billion company. I see where your answer is coming from but isn't assuming a risk comes from market cap alone lacks depth? Like for example TSLA has a huge market cap but Ford is a less risky company (according to beta at least)? I might be missing something - Love the video!

  • @jessesantini3217
    @jessesantini32179 ай бұрын

    Q5: if we consider the WACC formula then wouldn’t it be fair to conclude it’s possible that these two companies have the same WACC? If everything we say everything else remains the same besides market cap we can assume they both have the same cost of equity and debt and the same relative % split of each

  • @nitikaverma1810

    @nitikaverma1810

    6 ай бұрын

    i thought the same way

  • @UtahTech-pt4bo

    @UtahTech-pt4bo

    5 ай бұрын

    That’s completely true. I reached the same conclusion while reading the question.

  • @julienboisvert223

    @julienboisvert223

    4 ай бұрын

    I'm pretty new to finance so I might be wrong but wouldn't the bigger company be able to get a lower interest rate on loans(because it should be more stable), so a smaller cost of debt and therefore a lower overall WACC than the smaller one?

  • @julienboisvert223

    @julienboisvert223

    Ай бұрын

    @@bp15128 I guess the question is just very unclear. We can't really know what the "all else equal" means because there is definitely something different if both WACCs aren't equal

  • @Bodiedbyjessfitness
    @Bodiedbyjessfitness4 ай бұрын

    All of those were hard! Revenue Manager here, am I in over my head?!

  • @FA9082

    @FA9082

    4 ай бұрын

    Lol NONE of thee question were hard. If you think these were hard you are not cut out to work in high finance lol

  • @Bodiedbyjessfitness

    @Bodiedbyjessfitness

    4 ай бұрын

    Ok….Just because I’m not ready now does not mean I won’t be ready in the future. Thats what school is for. Have some compassion and worry about what your high finance job and not my career.

  • @arslanmughal2024
    @arslanmughal202417 күн бұрын

    Can I still be a financial analyst if I don't want to work on finalizing financial statements, a task typically handled by Big 4 accountants?

  • @trevyngarringer9396
    @trevyngarringer9396 Жыл бұрын

    Did you learn most of the in school? Or on the job?

  • @careerprinciples

    @careerprinciples

    Жыл бұрын

    A combination of both, but while in school, a lot of what I learned came from outside the traditional classroom (friends, upperclassmen, and others who have gone through multiple finance interviews)

  • @fernandovp5677
    @fernandovp567710 ай бұрын

    Gonna graduate next year with a business economics degree. Should I be worried if I plan on becoming a financial analyst, but not quite have the concepts mentioned in this video down?

  • @Gbb93

    @Gbb93

    10 ай бұрын

    I would think as long as you are savvy with Excel you should be ok. The jargon will come with experience. Financial analysts are mostly concerned with categorizing the data, then understanding what of the data is important, then turning the data into visuals, and lastly explaining the visuals of the data to your colleagues or team.

  • @guilhermeluispessoa5288

    @guilhermeluispessoa5288

    7 ай бұрын

    Short answer: yes. You should master at least the first 3 questions to be in a safe zone

  • @zahinfayeajishaan6689
    @zahinfayeajishaan66896 ай бұрын

    Damn bro you dont blink

  • @FA9082

    @FA9082

    4 ай бұрын

    East Asian people dont have souls , thats why.

  • @frankmuller0.029
    @frankmuller0.0293 ай бұрын

    I think the top-down approach for the # of cups of Starbucks sold a day is too optimistic, or simplistic, as it has ignored affordability and propensity to spend on coffee. I would go bottom-up, looking at capacity and how fast it can sell. Assuming that a typical outlet is able to dish out 2 cups every 5 minutes, thus making it 2X12x15(hr/day)x5000(outlets)=1.8m cups a day. I’ll Google and share the result if I can find.the answer, I’ll provide it here. Or if anyone has the answer, please kindly share. Thanks.

  • @frankmuller0.029

    @frankmuller0.029

    3 ай бұрын

    Ok, turned out I was wrong and too conservative, as Google says "According to a USA Today Article dated 2006, they sell over 4 Million cups of coffee a day.17 Jan 2011”. So, the guy in the video was spot on!

  • @MrMasterNorris
    @MrMasterNorris8 ай бұрын

    You should use the income statment to estimate cups sold. If starbucks has a billion dolllars worth of revenue and the average cost of a coffee is $5 then we would expect 200 million coffee sales.

  • @elenamarchenko2642
    @elenamarchenko26424 ай бұрын

    Economist is there. Why not just ask Starbucks yearly operation revenue in the USA and divide into 5 us , assuming this is an average price of an average Starbucks cup?

  • @victorblaer
    @victorblaer4 ай бұрын

    Don't rreally agree wiith the wacc question. I suppose, yes the larger company will have lower default ratios per Damodaran datasets. But, things like cash and near cash equivalents will affect the lowering of beta more. Ceteris paribus - the larger company will have lower default ratios in the dataset of other similar companies..

  • @BigDan
    @BigDanАй бұрын

    The answer to Q5 is wrong. The WACC for the larger company would be higher. Since it states that all other things remain equal, the cost of debt, cost of equity, tax and the debt of both firms remain the same. Therefore, since it is generally true that debt is cheaper than equity and the more expensive equity now carries a larger weight in the larger company, the WACC would be higher.

  • @OmerMan992
    @OmerMan9927 ай бұрын

    Can you explain the 1st question? Why not say that on average you could earn 7% a year on your investment on something like the S&P500, so you'd ask a discount rate of at least that (7% compounded over two years)? A discount is always negative so I don't get why it's a trick question...

  • @OmerMan992

    @OmerMan992

    7 ай бұрын

    Oh is that because you don't want a discount, you want a bonus for waiting these two years because the value gone up? Is it that foolish of a question? Ofc the value goes up, it's too basic

  • @AS-dn7ds
    @AS-dn7dsАй бұрын

    Everything went over my head… im going to fail my interview 🙃🥲😭

  • @YeppersItsMe

    @YeppersItsMe

    Ай бұрын

    How did your interview go? I have one on Thursday and this guys making me nervous! 😂

  • @taquito.duende

    @taquito.duende

    24 күн бұрын

    @@YeppersItsMe How did your interview go?

  • @YeppersItsMe

    @YeppersItsMe

    24 күн бұрын

    @@taquito.duende it went really well, but they ended up going with someone with more experience