I think the GP is saying that absent the LB types extracting the money in the past, these companies would be profitable even after including interest payments because they had no business need to take on that debt. It was incurred solely as a mechanism to turn the company into a debt-machine for the benefit of the then shareholders. They took a bunch of expected future earnings, as a lump sum, at that time that turned out to not be real.
I think the GP is saying that absent the LB types extracting the money in the past, these companies would be profitable even after including interest payments because they had no business need to take on that debt. It was incurred solely as a mechanism to turn the company into a debt-machine for the benefit of the then shareholders. They took a bunch of expected future earnings, as a lump sum, at that time that turned out to not be real.