EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) is often considered misleading because it strips out critical expenses—namely capital expenditures, taxes, and debt costs—to create an inflated, "pseudo-cash flow" figure that can mask poor profitability and unsustainable debt. By ignoring the "wear and tear" of assets (depreciation), it hides the real, upfront costs of maintaining a business, particularly for asset-heavy industries.
The reason these issues matter is that EBITDA removes real expenses that a company must actually spend capital on – e.g. interest expense, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. As a result, using EBITDA as a standalone profitability metric can be misleading, especially for capital-intensive companies.
This preference reflects his belief that understanding the core earnings power of a business is crucial for making informed investment decisions. In summary, Buffett's preference for EBIT over EBITDA is grounded in his commitment to value investing and understanding a company's true profitability.
In essence, private equity firms prefer EBITDA because it removes financial variables that could skew comparisons, allowing for a more transparent evaluation of a company's core business performance. This standardization is crucial when making investment decisions or valuing potential acquisitions across an industry.
Here's the problem with EBITDA: it ignores these capital investments. A business may appear profitable on paper because EBITDA excludes depreciation and other costs. However, as Buffett often points out, a company can be EBITDA-positive but cash flow-negative.
The EBITDA trap: When profits don't convert to cash
A business can report high EBITDA while quietly struggling to meet its financial obligations. Why? Because EBITDA ignores: Working capital fluctuations: A company may stretch payables or accelerate receivables to inflate short-term cash flow.
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) is a financial metric showing a company's operating profitability by adding back non-operating expenses (Interest, Taxes) and non-cash expenses (Depreciation, Amortization) to net income, offering a clearer view of cash flow and making it easier to compare companies with different capital structures or tax situations, but it's not a perfect measure as it ignores real costs like asset wear-and-tear. Think of it as a simplified "scorecard" of core business performance before financing, taxes, and accounting entries.
Meanwhile, banks and lenders rely heavily on EBITDA multiples to gauge a company's ability to meet debt obligations, which directly impacts financing decisions. The transportation industry offers a good example of how multiples vary based on business size and quality.
Coca-Cola's ebitda for fiscal years ending December 2020 to 2024 averaged 13.553 billion. Coca-Cola's operated at median ebitda of 13.601 billion from fiscal years ending December 2020 to 2024. Looking back at the last 5 years, Coca-Cola's ebitda peaked in September 2025 at 16.307 billion.
In some cases, EBITDA can produce misleading results. Debt on long-term assets is easy to predict and plan for, while short-term debt is not. Lack of profitability isn't a good sign of business health, regardless of EBITDA.
How Is Business Profitability Best Measured? The gross profit margin, operating profit, and net profit margin ratios are the most commonly used measurements of business profitability. Net profit margin reflects the amount of profit a business gets from its total revenue after all expenses are accounted for.
The Rule of 40 SaaS states that the sum of a healthy SaaS company's annual recurring revenue growth rate and its EBITDA margin should be equal to or exceed 40%. It is a measure of how well a SaaS balances growth with profitability.
When it comes to analyzing the performance of a company on its own merits, some analysts see free cash flow as a better metric than EBITDA. This is because it provides a better idea of the level of earnings that is really available to a firm after it covers its interest, taxes, and other commitments.
Although EBITDA is widely used, it is not necessarily a legitimate measure of a company's success, and is often used as an initial guideline prior to deeper analysis. Warren Buffett has famously called EBITDA “utter nonsense”.
EBITDA is often criticized as an imperfect measure of earnings to use broadly in comparing the profitability of companies across industries. But the concept wasn't developed for this purpose. It was invented by billionaire investor John Malone.
Many founders confuse EBITDA vs revenue. They focus too much on growing the top line, calling it progress, while missing the fact that investors actually look deeper. They want to know how much of that growth turns into actual earnings. So, revenue shows how much you sell; EBITDA shows how much value you create.
10X EBITDA refers to a company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) multiplied by 10. It is a valuation metric investors and analysts use the calculator to evaluate and compare companies, especially for acquisition purposes.
Look at companies like Wal-Mart, GE and Microsoft — they'll never use EBITDA in their annual report.”
Many businesses tend to use this value because it reflects an accurate calculation of a company's performance and profitability, without including factors like taxes and interest that cannot always be controlled. It is important to note that the EBITDA measures profitability and not necessarily cash flow.