2021 Accounts filed so far

I have just had a look at the Preston NE accounts, another club that masks things by using a holding company in order to confuse us. Even when I got to the right company, I found much of what I read impossible to understand, particularly in the way that it is funded. Nevertheless, I would just add a couple more comments to what you have written above. Preston had business interruption insurance which they claimed upon in respect of COVID. The claim yielded £2,500,000. They also sold some of their tax losses to other members of the group for £2,307000. If these receipts were not available, their trading losses would have been £4,807,000 more than the £15,222,000 recorded in their Accounts, that is £20m.

Preston did not have the funds to support their transfer ambitions for the following season (2021/22), and as you point out, the owner stumped up another £8,5m in order to support his club. It is clear that the effects of COVID were worse for some clubs than they were for others.

 

Their last set of accounts has the prize money from their Rumbelows cup win on it.

 

Is that the year they won the Champions League?

 

I know that they got promoted but Norwich were in our division for the reporting period in question (1July 2020 to 30 June 2021). Their accounts show:-

Turnover of £57.2m down massively from the previous (Prem) year of £119.4m
Player salaries £66.3m down from the prior year of £88.9m
Operating loss of £27.5m

BUT

Profit on player transfers of a whopping £49m giving a net profit before tax of £21.5m. They even paid £5.8m tax, leaving their bottom line profit at £15.7m. A second successive profit leaves them cumulatively £10m in the black.

Nice set of accounts which even includes an assessment of the club's carbon footprint and steps being taken to improve it

 

Similarly promoted Brentford's accounts for last season are also out. They were in previous seasons a club with similar turnover to ours (£14.9m in 2019/20 v our £14.2m). However, there the similarity ends!

In 2020/21 Brentford had income of £18.2m (increases mainly from being on TV a lot and £1.7m of loan fees received) but spent a mind-boggling £71.3m to record an operating loss of £53.1m. Salaries increased from £25.9m to £41.4m, up 40% and well over 200% of turnover.

Their £53.1m operating loss was partly offset by player trading profits of £44.2m, net interest received of £0.4m and a tax credit of £6.1m giving a 'bottom line' loss of £2.4m.

They are kept afloat by £60m of shareholder loans.

 

So when people make the comparison with Brentford it really could not be further from the truth. Matthew Benham has direct loans of £65m to the club, he's loaned another £5m through FC Midtjylland (where he is majority shareholder). I wonder if our owners think that inter club loans are a good idea ?

 

Would they not have received a fair wedge from parachute payments that season ?

 

All this tells me is Football really is FUBARd and is on the precipice of implosion.

 

Yes, the vast majority of their £57m turnover, £47m, is income from the FA and EFL. I'd estimate that c. £40m is the first parachute payment.

 

Agree, Brentford are basically a rich fan's plaything. They've done very well with his money but without it, it would be very hard to believe they would be anywhere near where they are.

Our owners haven't done any inter-club loans as far as I'm aware but did something akin to that last summer. They sold most of Ostend's better/older players and with part of the c. E12m raised, bought a young forward from Nancy for a questionably inflated c. E2m. They then 'loaned' said young forward immediately back to Nancy. I think it was this transfer, effectively transferring E2m to Nancy, that was the main cause of the anger of Nancy's rivals.

 

The most X-rated so far came out yesterday, namely Reading.

Turnover £13.8m, costs of £50.1m, player trading profit of £0.7m giving a bottom line loss of £35.6m Wages were £33m, 240% of turnover on their own.

They now have cumulative losses of £174m.

They were kept afloat by £35m of additional share capital and loans from their owners. Their shareholders now have over £100m of share capital invested in a business with a net worth of minus £72m. This is in addition to £101m in loans outstanding, secured against the stadium, of which £100m is repayable this year.

In short, they are indeed FUBAR!

 

@Exile That is one car crash of a business. Imagine ploughing in £200m and staring down relegation to the third tier.

 

Absolutely and although they got a few £m for Olise, they otherwise don't seem to have cut much from their cost base this season either so more to come! I have little sympathy for Conway and co but it does feel a bit 'dirty' having to compete with teams of similar incomes that are spending over 200% beyond their means each season.

 

Coventry City have filed their Accounts. They are filed under the name Otium Entertainment Group, if anyone wants to look. They lost £4,731,201 after making a profit on sale of players of £1,870,179. I am not sure if I have missed something though as their overheads look low compared to other clubs in the division. However, their accumulated losses are now £83,883,156, and the owners have funded them to a total of £86,505,512 including loans. They spent another £1m on players in the summer transfer window, which is not included in these accounts.

 

When are player wages going to be impacted it’s unsustainable.

 

Our accounts are due to be filed today and, as of this morning, there was nothing on Companies House to indicate that this had yet happened.

Just to provide a bit of context regarding this, it doesn't necessarily mean that the filing hasn't yet been done. Companies House always have a backlog with postal filings, so it can take up to 2 weeks for the accounts to show up on the site and the filing status to be updated.

Once available, there'll be a barcode with a date showing the actual filing date.

I've experienced this with accounts filings I've done myself and it's a pain to see them showing as overdue, having been made well before the deadline.

In the short term, don't read too much into the filing status shown on Companies House. There's nothing sinister to read into this, as filing close to or on the deadline is a strategic choice that many companies adopt.

Here endeth the beancounter information update.

 

I have been summarising Championship club's accounts to a speadsheet, but in order to do this, I need to reorganise things sometimes in order to get assets and liabilities under the same headings. I had a very frustrating time last night as Coventry (Otium) had classified the sums owed to the EFL as creditors, and not loans. I had to read the notes several times in order to fully understand what they had done. As I said last night, overheads seem low, and I do not rule out more jiggery-pokery with the numbers. For example, I could not find any lease payment for the ground.