Excel FDS Formulas 1 I'm gonna take a look at building formulas in the sidebar. And what I'm gonna do here for Apple is to provide some EBITDA estimates and also some historical EBITDA numbers. So I'm gonna go to the FactSet toolbar and I want to insert a formula, but I'm gonna choose to show the FactSet sidebar for this. Now, you can see in the sidebar, you have the Identifier at the top, and then you've got the Data item at the bottom. I'm going to type my identifier for Apple and that's just the ticker. Then I can select Apple from the list. And now, for the data item, the easiest thing here is to look at the different sources. There are three main sources that you'll typically use. There's FactSet Global, and that's mostly share prices. Then down below are financials. And within here, you have FactSet Fundamentals and those typically are historical financial statement items. And then the last source is FactSet Estimates data. And I want, firstly, historical EBITDA, so I'm gonna choose Financials and that's FactSet Fundamentals. And EBITDA is an income statement item. So you can see EBITDA there. And I'm gonna go down and we have got EBITDA. And you can see, there is a little bit of information about that EBITDA item. So I'll choose EBITDA, and then I've got a number of different options here. So I can choose whether it's on annual basis, a calendarized basis, a quarterly basis, or even an LTM basis. I want it on an LTM - Quarterly basis. And then it's asking me the latest completed period. And I just want the latest LTM number so I'm just gonna choose that. I don't want a time series so I'm not gonna choose an end date. And then there are a few other options here for the units whether that's thousands, millions, or billions. I'm going to leave that as the default units. And then a further option for EBITDA is whether it's after or before stock options expense. For valuation, I would choose EBITDA after stock option expense. Also, I want the date option to based on fiscal date, so that's fine. I'm then gonna insert that query. And then if I have a look at the formula that's showing, you can see that in this FDS code, I've got the ticker in quotes. Then I've got the data item, which is the EBITDA, and it's an LTM EBITDA for the latest period. And that's denoted by the zero there in the formula. Now, you can actually make this formula a little bit more useful or customizable. So I could put in the ticker here by inserting a row and typing aapl. by inserting a row and typing aapl. What I can then do is just edit the formula and instead of having the ticker in quotes, I can now just reference the cell above. And if I now refresh the formula, the formula now updates and it's still showing the LTM EBITDA for Apple, but it's much more useful as a formula as I could now easily change the ticker if needed, and then just refresh the FactSet field. So that's just linking your formula to a ticker. Now, if I move to right, I'm going to get the EBITDA estimates. The previous item was LTM data. And now, I want to input estimates for 2023 and 2024. I now want to go back to my sidebar. And the source this time is FactSet Estimates and I want Consensus Estimates, and that's going to bring up some options for Consensus Estimates. The currency I'm gonna have is the local currency, which is U.S. dollars, and it's currently got earnings per share as the data item, but I don't want that. I want EBITDA. Now, when I enter EBITDA, you can see there is a number of different EBITDA items. You've got Reported, Standalone, Consolidated EBITDA, EBITDA Plus Rent, and even Adjusted EBITDA. So one of the things that you need to be careful about is exactly which data item you need. What I recommend is, if you are unsure which item you want, then go and take a look in the workstation to see what number is showing there, to see if it's consistent with the number that you're getting via the FDS formula. I'm gonna choose EBITDA - Adjusted and the mean estimate is selected, but I'm gonna choose Median, that's my preference for estimates. And it's choosing here whether a want to earn an annual or quarterly basis and I could choose for it to be calendarized as well. So that would mean it was consistent with other companies which have a year end at the 31st of December whereas Apple has a year end on the 30th of September. If I come down, I'm gonna select latest available estimates. So then what I'm gonna do is just insert that selection. And now, you can see that we've got AAPL-US in the formula again. So I'm gonna edit this formula, and instead I'm gonna link that formula to the ticker in the cell that I put in before. I'll then pop the dollar signs around that to make it an absolute reference and that means if I then copy the formula, then that reference will remain. So I'm now gonna copy that formula to the right. Notice that the formula has a plus one showing here and that means it's pulling the EBITDA for the first forecast year. I can then edit that formula. And this time, I'll replace it with +2 and that should give me the second forecast year data, which is for 2024. So when I refresh my data, you can see that we've got the two estimates, the 2023 estimate and the 2024 estimate here as well. This is really useful for building your comps table using this sidebar on the right.