Depreciation and amortisation
Depreciation and amortisation is this year's share of the cost of things bought in earlier years — a factory, a fleet, an acquired brand — charged against profit even though no cash left the company this year.
How it is computed here
| Formula | as reported in the cash flow statement |
|---|---|
| Unit | Currency amount |
| Period | One fiscal year, as reported |
| Source | Extracted from SEC filings; every value on an asset page carries the accounting tag and the filing it came from |
| Identifier | depreciacao_amortizacao |
What goes into the formula
| Depreciation | The annual write-down of physical assets: buildings, machines, vehicles. A machine expected to last ten years and bought for $100M charges roughly $10M a year. |
|---|---|
| Amortisation | The same idea for things you cannot touch: software, patents, customer lists and brands acquired in a takeover. |
A formula without its inputs explained is decoration. Where an input is missing from a filing, the metric is left empty here rather than completed with a zero or an estimate.
How to calculate depreciation and amortisation, step by step
A company that bought a $500M plant five years ago, expected to last twenty years.
| Cost of the plant | $500M |
|---|---|
| Expected life | 20 years |
| Cash spent this year on it | $0 |
- Annual depreciation = 500 ÷ 20 = $25M.
- Profit this year is $25M lower than it would otherwise be.
- Cash this year is unchanged: the $500M left in year one.
Result: $25M charged against profit, $0 of cash out
This is the single largest reason profit and cash differ. Adding it back to operating income gives EBITDA; it is also the first line added back at the top of the cash flow statement.
The figures in this example are illustrative and rounded — they are not a real company. The real figures on this site are the live ones below and on every asset page, each carrying the filing it came from.
What depreciation and amortisation is good for
Understanding this one line explains most of the distance between the income statement and the cash flow statement. It is also the reason a company can report a loss and still be comfortably cash generative — and the reason a payout ratio above 100% is not automatically a warning.
What this number does not tell you
The charge is an estimate, not a measurement: the company chooses how long an asset is expected to last, and a longer estimate produces a smaller charge and a larger profit without anything physical changing. It also is not a reserve — no money is being set aside to replace the asset. Treating it as a fiction, which is what adding it back to reach EBITDA implicitly does, ignores that the plant will in fact wear out.
Every metric on this site is published with its blind spot stated. A figure without its limit is half a fact.
Highest reported depreciation and amortisation
| AMZNAMAZON COM INC | $65.8B |
|---|---|
| MSFTMICROSOFT CORPORATION | $34.3B |
| XOMEXXON MOBIL CORP | $26.0B |
| SHELShell plc | $25.3B |
| GOOGAlphabet Inc. | $21.1B |
| GOOGLAlphabet Inc. | $21.1B |
| TAT&T INC. | $20.9B |
| CVXChevron Corp | $20.1B |
From the most recent fiscal year of each company. Only companies reporting in US dollars are ranked here — a figure in yen or won is not larger, it is in another currency.
See it in a published filing
These pages show the figure across up to nineteen fiscal years, with the accounting tag and the filing behind every value.