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Technology Stocks : Vimpel Comm (VIP) ADR's of the Russian Cellular Phone Co. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rex who wrote (64)	6/26/1998 8:01:00 AM
From: Alexander Pavlov	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 283

Sorry to be somewhat late with my opinion re. EBITDA, but I just started my VIP research which was inspired by recent company's very impressive marketing actions. As to EBITDA, IMHO its use very well justified in case of VIP. This is Russian company. Thus it pays taxes according to Russian tax code. Rules governing accounting for amortization, depreciation and interest differ from these in effect in the US as well. And it is EBITDA which allows to compare companies with different accounting policy. Kind regards, Alex << Can anyone comment on this article from this issue of FORTUNE? I see VIP and PLDI reporting their results around this metric. Is ebitda getting out of hand again? The same performance measure (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) that corporate raiders cited to justify their takeovers in the 1980s is becoming alarmingly ubiquitous in mainstream corporate America today as an alternative to traditional bottom-line-based financial yardsticks. Your company has lousy real earnings growth? Not enough profits to cover interest costs? Your stock is ridiculously overvalued? No problem! Look at ebitda, and everything looks okay. >>