In the last year, what have been your firm’s earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT)?
Please use a number with one decimal place, whereby positive values indicate a profit and negative values indicate a loss. If you do not have the relevant information to provide an answer, please select N/A.

Why is this question important?

• This question assesses and compares your firm’s EBIT margin (EBIT relative to revenue) in the last year with benchmarks.
• Generally, the EBIT margin provides indications about a firm’s competitive position. Typically, the stronger a firm’s unique selling proposition in the market, the higher the attainable EBIT margin. A low EBIT margin, however, suggests a highly competitive market environment.

How to answer this question?

Important terminology

• Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) is an indicator of a firm’s profitability and measures the profit a firm generates from its operations within a specific period of time, however, excluding interest and income tax expenses. There are two options to calculate the EBIT for a given year:
  • Option 1: EBIT = Operating revenue – operating expenses + non-operating income (non-operating income denotes gains or losses from sources not related to the typical activities of the business, such as gains or losses from investments, property or asset sales, currency exchange and other atypical gains or losses)
  • Option 2: EBIT = Net income + net interest expense / – net interest income + income taxes
• If a decimal number is required, then please use the formatting “x.x”