Do balance sheets provide the information investors need to make their decisions?
The question might seem misplaced, but it is not. Ask any equity analyst what kind of information he/she uses to valuate a listed (manufacturing) company, and he/she would immediately answer: EBITDA and net financial position. Then ask a CFO of a manufacturing company where these two indicators are reported in financial statement. If the company is not listed, he/she would answer that there is no trace of them, because they are not accounting measures required by either IAS/IFRS or ITA GAAP. If the company is listed, it’s very likely that the CFO will refer to a section the company has voluntarily drafted not to leave analysts in the dark. It’s also very probable that the CFO in question will signal the criterion which distinguishes the EBITDA calculated by the company from that calculated for other companies, maybe because it excludes non-recurring and non-organic components, while others include them. Something analogous could happen for the net financial position. One should not be
