EBITDA is considered by Wall Street to be a key cash flow metric and many public companies regularly announce EBITDA data in their press releases. However, like EPS, EBITDA can be easily manipulated. EBITDA and EPS both utilize "E", the first letter of both of the acronyms, for "Earnings" which can be inflated by non cash generating items such as accounts receivable. EBITDA should always be measured against either Free Cash Flow (FC) and/or Operating Cash Flow (OC), both widely considered as the two most conservative metrics for measuring cash flow.

Free Cash Flow (operating cash flow minus capital expenditures) is the most conservative cash flow metric. Some consider it to be too conservative since it can give a negative signal on extremely fast growing companies. For example, Wal-Mart regularly generates negative free cash flow (FC) since they are aggressively making capital expenditures when they open new stores. However, Wal-Mart has generated 20 consecutive quarters of positive operating cash flow OC. Both FC and OC data can be found in a company's CASH FLOW STATEMENT, which is filed quarterly with the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).