$600K EBITDA? Try $200K. Here's how they hid it.

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May 08, 2026

by a professional from Harvard University - Harvard Business School in Atlanta, GA, USA

$600K EBITDA. Clean QuickBooks. Everything matched. Then I opened the balance sheet. Capital expenditures were growing year over year. Strange for a marketing company that wasn't buying equipment or building anything. So I pulled the general ledger. The seller had been quietly moving regular business expenses — lights, phones, computers, travel, cost of goods sold — off the income statement and burying them in CapEx. $400,000 of real operating expenses. Hidden in plain sight. That $600K SDE? Actually $200K. The income statement told a story. The balance sheet told the truth. I break the whole story down in my new video. Watch now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsQjtfSMBoQ
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Reply by a searcher
in Toronto, ON, Canada
Measure twice cut once. Great video
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Reply by a searcher
from The University of Michigan in Kirkland, WA, USA
This is why the balance sheet deserves some love too. The tax returns probably would have started waving red flags as well. Thanks for sharing!
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