VALUATIO
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Candidate Handbook

The standard, in full, before you pay anything.

What the credential asserts

A VALUATIO credential asserts one thing: that the named holder passed two timed modelling drills under a server-enforced clock, at the stated pass mark, on the date printed on the document. It is a statement about work that was done and graded. It is not a ranking, a class of degree, or an opinion about the holder.

What it is not

VALUATIO is an independent training product and this is our own assessment of our own curriculum. It is not accredited by any national accreditation body, and it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a pathway to the CFA Institute, the CAIA Association, FINRA, the ACCA, or any regulator or professional body. It confers no licence, no designation, and no right to practise or advise. It is not a substitute for any licensing examination in any jurisdiction, and it is not a guarantee of employment or of an interview.

  • Nobody outside VALUATIO sets or reviews this standard today. If that changes, this page changes with it, and the change will be dated.
  • We do not publish pass rates yet, because too few people have sat the drills for a percentage to mean anything. When the number is meaningful it goes here.
  • The launch price is low because the credential is new and unproven, not because it is discounted from a value it has already established.

The curriculum: 17 free courses, recommended, not required

The preparation for the drills. Every course carries its own checks, 171 across the curriculum, and each ends in its own free course completion record. None of the 17 is required for the credential, which is earned on the two timed drills below.

  • Reading a 10-K
  • The three-statement model
  • Enterprise value and equity value
  • Free cash flow
  • Working capital and the cash conversion cycle
  • Trading multiples
  • Cost of equity and beta
  • Weighted average cost of capital
  • Discounted cash flow
  • Terminal value
  • Sensitivity and scenario analysis
  • Comparable companies
  • Precedent transactions
  • Sum of the parts
  • Leveraged buyout
  • Accretion and dilution
  • Quality of earnings

How a course is scored, and why completion means answered

A course is complete when every check in it has been answered, not when every check has been answered correctly. This is deliberate and it is the rule most likely to look wrong at first glance, so here is the reasoning: answers are immutable once given, and a score you may retake until it is perfect measures persistence rather than understanding. Completion therefore records that you sat the course. Your score records how you did, separately and honestly, and it is the score that gates the free course completion record.

  • An answer cannot be changed once submitted. The first answer is the answer.
  • You get 4 attempts at a course in total: the first sitting and 3 retakes.
  • A retake is for a course you finished and want to improve. It spends one attempt whatever happens.
  • A free course completion record needs a score of at least 60% on that course.
  • Any completion record earned after the first attempt states which attempt earned it, on the face of the document. The reader sees the same fact the holder does.

The two timed drills

The curriculum is taught with the answers visible, because that is how teaching works. The drills are the part that is assessed blind, and they are what makes the credential a claim rather than an attendance record. Both must be passed.

  • DCF from a filing: 45 minutes, pass mark 70%. Build a discounted cash flow for a mid-cap industrial from its filed figures and answer for WACC, cost of equity, terminal value and value per share.
  • Paper LBO: 20 minutes, pass mark 70%. The classic interview exercise, graded on the numbers rather than the method.
  • The clock runs on the server. `deadline_at` is written when you start and checked when you submit. A timer in the browser is a suggestion.
  • The answers are never sent to your browser. The drill ships with inputs and questions only; expected values are computed at grading time, against the same valuation engine the terminal uses.
  • Every sitting is a different company. The figures are drawn for your attempt and graded against that paper, so the feedback from an earlier attempt, or the answers of another candidate, will not carry over to yours.
  • Questions are weighted, and each has a stated tolerance, because a WACC quoted to the nearest basis point is reasonable and a per-share figure that compounds five inputs deserves more room.
  • An abandoned attempt expires on its own clock rather than being cancelled, so restarting when a paper gets uncomfortable does not buy you a fresh 45 minutes.
  • Drills may be retaken, subject to a rate limit of 10 attempt starts per hour. Your best passing score is the one that counts.

Eligibility, checked on the server

A credential is issued when two conditions hold together, and both are re-checked server-side at the moment of issue rather than trusted from the screen that offered the button.

  • Both drills passed.
  • A complete profile: your name, which is printed on the document and snapshotted at issue time, and your date of birth, which identifies the holder and is never printed.

Two documents, and the difference between them

  • The credential, prefixed VAL-. One per person, paid, earned on both timed drills, and claims a capability.
  • A course completion record, prefixed VLC-. One per course, free, earned by answering that course’s checks at 60% or better. It records the course and a score, claims nothing about capability, and says so in its own footer.
  • The two are deliberately different documents, and look it. Only the credential carries the engraving, the security frame, a signature and the calibration stamp; a completion record is a plain record with a single border.

Verification

Every credential we issue, of either kind, is publicly verifiable at valuatio.co/verify without an account and without asking us. The document carries a QR code that resolves to its own verification page. A holder can hand you an ID and you can check it in a browser, which is the part of this claim you do not have to take on trust. We can revoke a credential, and a revoked one says so on the same page rather than disappearing.

The founding cohort

Twenty-five places on this track are being given away free, to people who will finish it, review it honestly in public, and let their name and credential ID be published. The review must say the place was free, and the place never depends on the review being positive. The standard is identical: the same drills, the same pass marks, graded by the same engine. Nothing is waived, because a credential that was waived is not evidence of anything. The offer and its obligations are set out at valuatio.co/founding.

Fees

The assessment is a one-time purchase at $79, currently $20 as an introductory price until 30 November 2026. Course completion records are free. The Learning Center is free to read. Refunds are covered in full on the Refund Policy page: in short, refundable within 14 days provided you have not submitted a graded drill attempt, because once a paper has been graded the material has been delivered.

Who issues it

The credential is issued by Asgar Aslanli, who built the curriculum, the grader and this standard, and whose signature is on the document. The assessment and the payment are separate things: Almaz Abdullayeva operates VALUATIO as a business and is the party you buy from, which the Terms set out. There is no committee and no institution behind it, and pretending otherwise would be the first thing wrong with the document. The About page says the same thing at more length, and the support mailbox reaches the same person.

Changes to this handbook

This page is the standard as it stands today, and it is generated from the same constants the grader uses, with a test that fails the build if the two disagree. If a rule changes, this page changes in the same commit. If you hold a credential and a rule changes afterwards, your credential continues to mean what this page said on the day it was issued. Questions about any of it go to support@valuatio.co.

  • 28 September 2026: the 17 courses stopped being a condition of the credential, which is now earned on the two timed drills and a complete profile. The certificate no longer states the curriculum, because a holder who went straight to the drills did not complete it. The free per-course documents were renamed course completion records and given their own plain design, so they cannot be mistaken for the credential. No credential had been issued to anyone under the previous rule.