Purpose: This paper investigated the potential opportunistic disclosure of ‘earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation’ (EBITDA) by analysing the association between the quality of EBITDA reconciliations and factors associated with opportunistic disclosure.

Design: Ordinary least squares estimation was used to regress an EBITDA reconciliation score on factors associated with opportunistic disclosure for a sample of stock exchange news service reports of companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) for the financial years 2014 through 2016.

Findings: The results suggest that the management of JSE-listed companies signal the credibility of EBITDA as a performance measure by providing higher quality reconciliations, rather than using poor quality EBITDA reconciliations to mask potential opportunistic disclosure.

Practical implications: The results suggest that JSE-listed companies use EBITDA disclosure for informational purposes, rather than for opportunistic purposes.

Value: This paper contributes to a limited corpus of research on EBITDA as non-GAAP earnings measure. It provides support for the adequacy of the JSE’s disclosure requirements in facilitating high-quality financial reports. The results are timely as the JSE is contemplating whether to issue expanded disclosure requirements intended to limit the potential opportunistic use of non-GAAP earnings disclosure.

目的：本文通过分析EBITDA对帐质量与机会披露相关因素之间的关联，研究了“利息，税项，折旧和摊销前收益”（EBITDA）的潜在机会披露。

设计：使用普通最小二乘估计法对2014年至2016财政年度在约翰内斯堡证券交易所（JSE）上市的公司的证券交易所新闻服务报告样本中的与机会披露相关的因素进行EBITDA对帐评分回归。

结果：结果表明，通过提供更高质量的对帐，而不是使用质量较差的EBITDA对帐来掩盖潜在的机会性披露，在JSE上市公司的管理层通过绩效指标表明了EBITDA的信誉。

实际含义：结果表明，在JSE上市的公司将EBITDA披露用于信息目的，而不是机会目的。

价值：本文作为非GAAP收入指标，对EBITDA的研究成果有限。它为JSE披露要求的充分性提供了支持，以促进高质量的财务报告。由于JSE正在考虑是否发布扩大披露要求以限制非GAAP收益披露的潜在机会，因此结果是及时的。