2007 EFC Accounts
By Joe Beardwood : 15 Nov 2007
Today I received my copy of the 2007 accounts.
Like seasons 2004 and 2005, the numbers have been ‘helped’ by the profit on sale of assets – this year it is a £4M profit on disposal of player registrations.
Key Points
· Turnover is down for the second year running although this year it’s driven by the fact that merchandising and catering operations were outsourced to cut costs. The club will argue that turnover would have been £58,056,000 IF they had not been outsourced – however they were and this has reduced the expenditure line!
· Sponsorship and advertising were down by 13%
· The trading result has deteriorated for the second year running down from the peak of £10.4M profit (the year Mr Wyness took over) to a half million loss.
· Interest charges are now nearly back to the level of 2004, the year before the Rooney windfall reduced borrowings. Given that a mortgage was lodged in August by Barclays for £25M then expect this figure to increase for 2008.
· Mr Wyness’s salary package reduced from £466k to £426k
· This year’s loss of £9.4M has been accompanied by borrowings on the balance sheet increasing from £55M to £66M
The balance sheet is now showing net liabilities of £20M – up from our record level of £10.4M negative last year.
Who cares?
Most of the fans won’t give a stuff about the results provided we keep winning in the cup and Moyes works his miracles. Unfortunately, because football is a business then wages and bills do have to be paid and there comes a point when the bank will lend no more.
Expect net player sales in January as we will need to generate cash unless an investor comes in. Let’s hope Tesco are paying for everything to do with the new stadium as well – because these accounts suggest the club will have to borrow even more to fund the additional investment.
©2007 ToffeeWeb
