EBITDA in Belgian GAAP: rubrics 9901 and 630

EBITDA — earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation — is the most common operating-performance metric used in M&A, leveraged finance, and benchmarking. It is also the most common source of confusion when reading a Belgian annual account, because EBITDA is not reported as a standalone line. You have to derive it.

The formula that works in Belgian GAAP

The reliable approach is to start from operating profit (rubric 9901) and add back depreciation, amortisation, and write-downs (rubric 630). That gives you EBITDA in the sense most analysts understand it: operating performance before non-cash charges, before financing costs, and before tax.

EBITDA = Rubric 9901 + Rubric 630

Why this works

Rubric 9901 in the standardised Belgian template is defined as the result of the operating cycle: operating revenue minus operating costs, where operating costs already include depreciation, amortisation, and write-downs as a charge. Adding rubric 630 back neutralises that non-cash charge and brings you to the pre-D&A operating result. Interest is recorded below the operating line in Belgian GAAP, so it is already excluded; the same is true for tax.

Common mistakes

• Using rubric 9900 instead of 9901. Rubric 9900 is defined slightly differently in some templates and is an intermediate result, not the operating result proper. Always use 9901.
• Forgetting that 630 includes write-downs. Belgian rubric 630 covers depreciation on tangible fixed assets, amortisation on intangibles, and write-downs on tangible and intangible assets. If you back out only depreciation, you understate EBITDA in any year with a meaningful write-down.
• Mixing in financial provisions. Provisions for liabilities and charges (rubric 635/637) are also non-cash but they are not part of the standard EBITDA add-back. Including them produces a non-standard adjusted EBITDA that you should label as such.
• Reading EBITDA in the management commentary. Some companies disclose an EBITDA figure in their narrative or in a supplementary schedule; this is voluntary and may be calculated on a different basis (for instance, after backing out non-recurring charges). Stick to the rubric formula for cross-company comparability.

Handling smaller filers

Rubric 9901 and rubric 630 are both disclosed in the full and abbreviated templates, so EBITDA can be derived for the vast majority of Belgian filers. The micro template does report 9901 but not always 630 at the same level of granularity, which means EBITDA is available for some micro filers and not others. When the figure cannot be derived, Datasnoop flags it as missing rather than guessing.

From EBITDA to a multiple

Once you have a clean EBITDA, the natural next step is a valuation cross-check using a sector multiple. The screener and sector-statistics views in Datasnoop give you the inputs for this directly: median EBITDA in the relevant NACE sector, the implied multiple range from comparable transactions where available, and the company's own margin trajectory. None of this replaces a proper valuation exercise, but it usually tells you within five minutes whether the deal is in the realm of plausibility or whether somebody is asking far above the sector range.

A worked example: BV Patisserie Vandenberghe

To make the formula concrete, here is how it actually plays out on a typical Belgian filing. The figures below are from a hypothetical mid-sized filer but the structure mirrors the real abbreviated-format template. Every line maps to a rubric you can locate in the deposited annual account.

Translated: the bakery turned over €8.4m, ran €7.94m of operating costs and posted €0.48m of operating profit (EBIT). Of those costs, €0.32m was non-cash depreciation and amortisation. Adding that back gives an EBITDA of €0.8m, which equals a 9.5% EBITDA margin. From there a sector cross-check is one click in the sector-statistics view: if median EBITDA margin in NACE 10.71 (industrial bakery) sits at 7–9%, this filer is at the top of the band; if it sits at 12–15%, the company is underperforming relative to peers and probably has a structural cost issue worth investigating.

The three filing templates side-by-side

Whether you can derive EBITDA at all depends on which template the company filed. Belgian companies file in one of three formats based on their size; each discloses different levels of detail. This is why some Datasnoop profiles show a clean EBITDA line and others show a dash.

The takeaway: when you screen the Belgian market, expect to lose some micro-filers from a revenue-based sort. They're not hidden — they just don't disclose that line. For most operational analysis, restricting to abbreviated and full filers gives a clean comparable population. For a complete demographic view of a sector, include the micros and accept that revenue is incomplete.