Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization

A company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (commonly abbreviated EBITDA, pronounced /iːbɪtˈdɑː/,/əˈbɪtdɑː/, or /ˈɛbɪtdɑː/) is an accounting measure calculated using a company's net earnings, before interest expenses, taxes, depreciation and amortization are subtracted, as a proxy for a company's current operating profitability (i.e. how much profit it makes with its present assets and its operations on the products it produces and sells, as well as providing a proxy for cash flow).

Although EBITDA is not a financial measure recognized in generally accepted accounting principles, it is widely used in many areas of finance when assessing the performance of a company, such as securities analysis. It is intended to allow a comparison of profitability between different companies, by discounting the effects of interest payments from different forms of financing (by ignoring interest payments), political jurisdictions (by ignoring tax), collections of assets (by ignoring depreciation of assets), and different takeover histories (by ignoring amortization often stemming from goodwill). EBITDA is a financial measurement of cash flow from operations that is widely used in mergers and acquisitions of small businesses and businesses in the middle market. It is not unusual for adjustments to be made to EBITDA to normalize the measurement which allows buyers to compare the performance of one business to another.