{"id":148592,"date":"2010-01-07T05:00:34","date_gmt":"2010-01-07T10:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/economics\/2010\/01\/07\/index-points-to-improvements-in-medium-sized-company-profits\/"},"modified":"2010-01-07T05:00:34","modified_gmt":"2010-01-07T10:00:34","slug":"index-points-to-improvements-in-medium-sized-company-profits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/148592","title":{"rendered":"Index Points to Improvements in Medium-Sized Company Profits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An index that tracks a broad swath of medium-sized companies shows that that business profits are rising with the improving economy.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/media\/fifthstreet_cs_20100106164213.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"340\" height=\"266\" align=\"right\" \/>The index is distributed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifthstreetfinance.com\/\"><strong>Fifth Street Finance<\/strong> Corp.<\/a>, a publicly traded lender, and tracks a collection of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fifthstreetfinance.com\/portfolio.html\">30 or so companies that it either lends to or owns a stake in<\/a>. Companies include everything from <strong>Best Vinyl<\/strong>, a Utah- based vinyl fence installer, to <strong>Boot Barn<\/strong>, a California-based boot retailer and <strong>Filet of Chicken<\/strong>, a Georgia chicken processor.<\/p>\n<p>Fifth\u0092s Street index was at 782 in October, the third consecutive monthly increase, and up from 781 and 778 the previous two months. The index showed precipitous decline from it&#8217;s July 2008 peak of 1,021 through July of last year, as consumers retrenched and businesses cut back production.<\/p>\n<p>The index tracks the companies Ebitda, a painful acronym that stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Ebitda tracks cash going in and out of a company, and thus can be a useful measure of how the underlying business is performing.<\/p>\n<p>The measure is often misused by companies seeking to put a positive spin on their deteriorating finances, but Fifth Street\u0092s index tends to be a stricter measure of Ebitda because it uses the figure to monitor the financial covenants of companies in the index (meaning they can call a company\u0092s loan if the Ebitda measure falls below a certain number).<\/p>\n<p>There was carnage in virtually every industry tracked in the index, though health care, which tends to resist recessions, was relatively stable, according to Leonard Tannenbaum, Fifth Street\u0092s chief executive.<\/p>\n<p>The recent improvement \u0093says to use that small company health has stabilized,\u0094 says Mr. Tannenbaum.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/LhdZ4eZWxtjnehNxXqsFTrRYs1E\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/LhdZ4eZWxtjnehNxXqsFTrRYs1E\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/LhdZ4eZWxtjnehNxXqsFTrRYs1E\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~at\/LhdZ4eZWxtjnehNxXqsFTrRYs1E\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?a=Z1wgkHh7Usk:0RuppWbdVrc:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?a=Z1wgkHh7Usk:0RuppWbdVrc:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?i=Z1wgkHh7Usk:0RuppWbdVrc:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?a=Z1wgkHh7Usk:0RuppWbdVrc:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?i=Z1wgkHh7Usk:0RuppWbdVrc:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?a=Z1wgkHh7Usk:0RuppWbdVrc:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/wsj\/economics\/feed?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/wsj\/economics\/feed\/~4\/Z1wgkHh7Usk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An index that tracks a broad swath of medium-sized companies shows that that business profits are rising with the improving economy. The index is distributed by Fifth Street Finance Corp., a publicly traded lender, and tracks a collection of 30 or so companies that it either lends to or owns a stake in. Companies include [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}