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MARKETS / GLOSSARY / EBITDA

EBITDA

EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation — an attempt to show what the operation produced with the effects of borrowing, tax regime and past investment stripped out.

Definition

How it is computed here

Formulaoperating income + depreciation and amortisation
UnitCurrency amount
PeriodOne fiscal year, as reported
SourceExtracted from SEC filings; every value on an asset page carries the accounting tag and the filing it came from
Identifierebitda
The inputs

What goes into the formula

Operating incomeThe result of the business before interest and tax, as reported.
Depreciation and amortisationThis year's charge for assets bought in earlier years, taken from the cash flow statement, where it is reported as a non-cash add-back.

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.

Worked example

How to calculate ebitda, step by step

A capital-heavy company — a cable operator, a shipping line, a telecom.

Operating income$400M
Depreciation and amortisation$350M
Interest paid$200M
Capital expenditure$380M
  1. EBITDA = 400 + 350 = $750M.
  2. That $750M is the figure the company will put on the first slide.
  3. But the assets still wore out ($350M), the lenders were still paid ($200M), and the plant still had to be kept up ($380M).
  4. After those: 750 − 200 − 380 = $170M, before tax.

Result: $750M of EBITDA, $170M of anything resembling free cash

EBITDA nearly doubled the headline. The gap is not fraud — it is precisely the costs EBITDA is defined to exclude, in a business where those costs are the business.

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.

Why it matters

What ebitda is good for

For a company whose assets last decades, comparing operating income across years is distorted by depreciation schedules set long ago. EBITDA removes that distortion, which is why lenders use it: debt covenants are commonly written as a multiple of it.

The limit

What this number does not tell you

EBITDA is not cash and it is not a regulated accounting figure — there is no single definition, and companies compute it their own way, which is why this site computes one consistent version rather than repeating the company's. It deliberately ignores the cost of the assets the business consumes, which for a capital-intensive company is not a detail but the main event. Read it beside free cash flow or not at all. The gap this entry describes is measurable across the site. Of the 4,616 companies with a computable EBITDA, 3,061 report an EBITDA more than double their net income. That count needs splitting: 2,182 of them have zero or negative profit, where "double" is arithmetic without meaning. The number that matters is the other one — 879 profitable companies whose EBITDA is still more than twice what they actually earned. In those 879 the distance between the two figures is the interest, depreciation and tax that the headline number sets aside.

Every metric on this site is published with its blind spot stated. A figure without its limit is half a fact.

In the data

Highest reported ebitda

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.

On a real company

See it in a published filing

Their sectors

These pages show the figure across up to nineteen fiscal years, with the accounting tag and the filing behind every value.

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