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Meaning / Definition of

X Patent

Categories: Patent,

In the 46 years prior to the Great Fire of 1836, the United States government had issued about 10,000 patents. Most of these could never be revived again, but Congress acted to restore those records that could be reconstructed from private files and reproduce models which were deemed critical. Patents whose records were not restored were cancelled. There were a total of 2,845 patents restored, most of which were eventually given a number beginning with "X". All patents after the date of the establishment of the patent office in July 1836 were numbered as a new series (without the X), beginning with a new Patent No. 1 to John Ruggles. A small number of the new series patents had been destroyed in the Great Fire but they were quickly recovered from their owners' records. X files bear numbers that range from X000001 to X011280. X0000001 is the first patent, issued to Samuel Hopkins in 1790.

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Definition / Meaning of

EBIDTA

Categories: Accounting, Stocks, Fundamental Analysis,

earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. An approximate measure of a company's operating cash flow based on data from the company's income statement. Calculated by looking at earnings before the deduction of interest expenses, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. This earnings measure is of particular interest in cases where companies have large amounts of fixed assets which are subject to heavy depreciation charges (such as manufacturing companies) or in the case where a company has a large amount of acquired intangible assets on its books and is thus subject to large amortization charges (such as a company that has purchased a brand or a company that has recently made a large acquisition). Since the distortionary accounting and financing effects on company earnings do not factor into EBIDTA, it is a good way of comparing companies within and across industries. This measure is also of interest to a company's creditors, since EBIDTA is essentially the income that a company has free for interest payments. In general, EBIDTA is a useful measure only for large companies with significant assets, and/or for companies with a significant amount of debt financing. It is rarely a useful measure for evaluating a small company with no significant loans. Sometimes also called EBITDA or operational cash flow.

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