[hansvm]

EBITDA says something about the profitability of the company's current offerings if all the corporate bullshit were amortized over time. It's a useful lens if you have a wildly profitable offering that doesn't look like it in a given accounting regime (Amazon for 10-20 yrs, intentionally), and it's a deceptive ploy to part investors from their money in other contexts.

No metric is perfect; in addition to asking how well a company meets a metric, take the time to ask what "meeting that metric" might mean and how that relates to your goals.