EBITDA (Income Statement)

EBITDA (Income Statement) is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation for a single reported fiscal year, taken from the company's own income statement rather than from a trailing twelve-month aggregate.

The calculation:

EBITDA = Operating Income + Depreciation + Amortisation
EBITDA = Net Income + Interest + Taxes + Depreciation + Amortisation

Why this figure is listed separately from EBITDA (TTM):

• Different window: This is one closed fiscal year. The TTM figure covers the last twelve months, which usually spans parts of two fiscal years
• Different currency basis: A company reports its statements in its reporting currency, which is not always the currency its shares trade in. The two figures can therefore differ by an exchange rate as well as by a window
• Different source: This one is a line in a filed statement. The trailing figure is an aggregate computed on top of filings

The two are not interchangeable, and a gap between them is not automatically an error. A company whose profits are growing will show a higher trailing figure than its last full year; a company that reports in a different currency than it trades in may show two numbers that differ by far more than its business changed.

What this figure is good for:

• Year-on-year comparison: Fiscal years are like-for-like against each other in a way trailing windows are not
• Tracing to the filing: It appears in the annual statements, so it can be checked against the company's own report
• Margin and coverage work: It sits beside revenue, operating income and interest from the same statement, so ratios built from it share one window

The limitations of EBITDA apply here as they do anywhere: it excludes the cost of the assets the business runs on, it is not cash flow, and it says nothing about the reinvestment a company needs to stand still. For capital-intensive businesses, read it alongside free cash flow and capital expenditure rather than on its own.