Definition

Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization, or as cynics call it, earnings before all the stuff that actually matters. It's the financial equivalent of saying you ran a marathon if you don't count the parts where you walked, stopped, and took an Uber.

Example Usage

"Our EBITDA is fantastic! Our actual net income? We'd prefer to discuss EBITDA."

Related Terms

Advanced

non-performing asset

Banking euphemism for a loan that's gone bad and isn't generating income anymore, like a car that won't start but you still owe payments on. It's the financial equivalent of politely calling a disaster a "challenge."

💰 Finance / Accounting
Intermediate

clawback

A provision requiring executives to return compensation if certain conditions aren't met or if it was based on fraudulent numbers. It's the corporate version of 'give that back right now.'

💰 Finance / Accounting
Intermediate

buyout

When one party acquires a controlling stake in a company by purchasing enough shares to tell everyone else to pack their desk plants. It's the corporate equivalent of buying out your roommate's lease, except with more lawyers, bigger numbers, and significantly less drama about who gets the couch. Can be friendly (management buyout) or hostile (surprise, you work for someone else now).

💰 Finance / Accounting
Intermediate

debt-to-equity ratio

A leverage metric comparing total liabilities to shareholder equity, revealing whether a company is conservatively financed or one recession away from bankruptcy. Financial analysts' favorite way to judge how recklessly a company borrows.

💰 Finance / Accounting
Intermediate

accrual accounting

An accounting method that records revenues and expenses when they're earned or incurred, not when cash actually changes hands. It's the difference between promising to pay someone and actually opening your wallet.

💰 Finance / Accounting
Intermediate

rollovers

The financial maneuver of moving retirement funds from one account to another without triggering tax penalties, or in web design, that satisfying hover effect that proves a button is actually clickable. In finance, it's how you avoid giving Uncle Sam a premature cut of your 401(k). The term doing double duty in completely unrelated industries, because why make jargon simple?

💰 Finance / Accounting

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