North American Network Operators Group

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Re: EBITDA [was Re: Interconnects]

  • From: Paul Vixie
  • Date: Sun May 19 01:23:17 2002

> "EBITDA positive" does not mean profitable, or even necessarily
> financially stable.

Right you are.  So please let me clarify my earlier statement (that "PAIX
has been modestly profitable for years").  If we were not a wholly owned
subsidiary we would owe income taxes.  When we have been wholly owned by
companies who were paying income taxes, some of the taxes they had to pay
were because of PAIX.  (Presumably this positive our income situation will
make it easy for MFN to sell us.)

Let's have a look at Extreme Networks' recently published financials.
(Bring up http://biz.yahoo.com/fin/l/e/extr.html to follow along.)  These
folks showed a net loss this quarter yet the analysts applauded them and
their stock shot up a bit because they had a nonrecurring charge larger
than their net loss.  This tells analysts that the company would have
taxable income if not for the nonrecurring event, which gives them hope
for the next quarter.  On http://biz.yahoo.com/fin/l/e/extr_ai.html we
even see that in the year ending July 2000 they paid $10M in income taxes,
which tells us that maybe they know how that feels and want to do it again
some day.

I like EBITDA as a yardstick for measuring one company against another if
they are otherwise similar and I'm looking for a differentiator.  But I
don't personally buy stock based on EBITDA numbers -- I want to see actual
net income and, paradoxically, I love a company who has to pay income tax
because it means they had INCOME to pay taxes on.
-- 
Paul Vixie <[email protected]>
President, PAIX.Net Inc. (NASD:MFNX)