Ebitda Quotes

“By focusing on a few key financial metrics, board members can transform these statements from a labyrinth into a compass, guiding them through the company's financial landscape.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr., Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance

“All else being constant, Gross Profit is more important than EBITDA.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth, Business Essentials

“Trumpeting EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) is a particularly pernicious practice. Doing so implies that depreciation is not truly an expense, given that it is a “non-cash” charge.

Imagine, if you will, that at the beginning of this year a company paid all of its employees for the next ten years of their service (in the way they would lay out cash for a fixed asset to be useful for ten years). In the following nine years, compensation would be a “non-cash” expense—a reduction of a prepaid compensation asset established this year. Would anyone care to argue that the recording of the expense in years two through ten would be simply a bookkeeping formality?”
― Warren Buffett, The Essays of Warren Buffett : Lessons for Corporate America