PE-focused guy here. I see EBITDA daily.

Adjusted EBITDA is just a funny way to say "we found a way to make us look profitable by shifting whatever we want in the cost lines". Unless you know specifically what they are doing to manipulate it, it's basically a bullshit metric to make a company look better than it really is. Often you'll see investment bankers make adj. EBITDA claims and its the buyers job to sniff out really what is going on.

Even EBITDA (which is a standard measure with standard calculations) is considered by many to be a bullshit metric:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brentbeshore/2014/11/13/ebitda-...