Span-America Medical Systems (Span-America Medical Systems) EBITDA per Share : $2.89 (TTM As of Mar. 2017)

Span-America Medical Systems EBITDA per Share Chart

Span-America Medical Systems Annual Data
	Trend	Sep07	Sep08	Sep09	Sep10	Sep11	Sep12	Sep13	Sep14	Sep15	Sep16
EBITDA per Share		Get a 7-Day Free Trial					2.95	2.87	1.65	2.29	2.63

Span-America Medical Systems Quarterly Data
	Jun12	Sep12	Dec12	Mar13	Jun13	Sep13	Dec13	Mar14	Jun14	Sep14	Dec14	Mar15	Jun15	Sep15	Dec15	Mar16	Jun16	Sep16	Dec16	Mar17
EBITDA per Share	Get a 7-Day Free Trial															0.51	0.63	0.78	0.61	0.87

Span-America Medical Systems EBITDA per Share Calculation

EBITDA per Share is the amount of Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA) per outstanding share of the company's stock.

Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA) is what the company earns before it expenses interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Span-America Medical Systems's EBITDA per Share for the fiscal year that ended in Sep. 2016 is calculated as

Span-America Medical Systems's EBITDA per Share for the quarter that ended in Mar. 2017 is calculated as

EBITDA per Share for the trailing twelve months (TTM) ended in Mar. 2017 adds up the quarterly data reported by the company within the most recent 12 months, which was $2.89

* For Operating Data section: All numbers are indicated by the unit behind each term and all currency related amount are in USD.
* For other sections: All numbers are in millions except for per share data, ratio, and percentage. All currency related amount are indicated in the company's associated stock exchange currency.

Span-America Medical Systems  (NAS:SPAN) EBITDA per Share Explanation

EBITDA is a cash flow measure that ignores changes in working capital. EBITDA minus Depreciation, and Amortization (DA) equals EBIT. EBIT is profit before interest and taxes. Of course, Interest and taxes need to be paid.

While depreciation and amortization expenses do not need to be paid in cash, assets - especially tangible assets - do need to be replaced over time. EBITDA is not a measure of profit in any sense. EBITDA is a measure of cash generation by a business where the uses of that cash may be more or less discretionary depending on the nature of the business.

The EBITDA of a TV station is largely discretionary. Owners may use much of the EBITDA generated by a TV station as they see fit. The EBITDA of a railroad is largely non-discretionary. Owners must use much of the EBITDA generated by a railroad to replace the physical assets of the railroad or the business will literally fall apart over time.

EBITDA can be thought of as the cash a business generates that is available to:

EBITDA is widely used in financial analysis because Depreciation and Amortization are not present day cash expenses. Depreciation and amortization are the spreading out of the costs of assets over the time in which those assets provide benefits. Today's depreciation and amortization expenses relate to assets bought in the past. The assets being expensed may or may not need to be replaced in the future. And the cost to replace the assets may be more or less than it was in the past. For this reason, the depreciation and amortization expenses a company records in the present year may have no relationship to the actual cash costs needed to maintain its assets in future years.

A company's depreciation expense depends on both its expectations about the assets it owns and its choice of accounting methods. Two companies owning identical assets may have different depreciation expenses because they have different expectations about the useful lives of those assets and because they make different accounting choices.

Analysts use EBITDA to remove this element of personal choice from a company's accounting statements. The use of EBITDA is an attempt to make the results of different companies more comparable and uniform.

Be Aware

Although depreciation is not a cash cost, it is a real business cost because the company has to pay for the fixed assets when they purchase them. Both Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger hate the idea of EBITDA because in this calculation, depreciation is not counted as an expense.

EBITDA over Revenue is a good metric for comparing the operating efficiencies between companies because EBITDA is less vulnerable to companies' accounting choices. For this reason, EBITDA is used in ranking the Predictability of Companies.

Span-America Medical Systems EBITDA per Share Related Terms

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Span-America Medical Systems (Span-America Medical Systems) Business Description