The deck led with a 28 percent margin.
The business kept 3.
9x
How much bigger EBITDA looked than the profit the owner actually kept. Same company. Same quarter. One slide apart.
A friend forwards an investor deck on Saturday, genuinely excited. EBITDA margin 28 percent, trading at eight times EBITDA, looks cheap he says. I asked him to scroll one slide past the EBITDA chart, down to the actual profit and loss. Depreciation, interest and tax were still sitting there waiting. They always are.