Spurs Financials 2019/20

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175 mill?? Loose change for Uncle Joe
Uncle Joe is an investor, not a benefactor. The only reason he'll donate £175m is if he's pretty sure it'll net him £200m in the end. And that's a state of affairs I'd much prefer to the alternative of having some murderous state take over with the aim of making PR rather than profit.
 
The way the media portrays it , they make it look like SPurs are desperate for money.
Levy's just taking advantage of a situation and putting extra security on the club's finances
Smart...
 
The Sun have got things wrong - they've confused the terms of the bank loans which are in the last annual accounts with the bonds which were taken out after the last year end..

£525m of the debt has been refinanced as bonds, with the bonds only being repayable on average in 23 years time.

The only amount of the bonds that has to be paid in the next 23 years is the annual interest of circa £14m pa,

In addition there is a £112m bank loan with a long term repayment date - interest rate I think is average of 2.66%. so amount payable annually is low at circa £3m pa.

Are you saying The Sun isn't reporting facts correctly over a sensationalised headline? Doesn't sound like them!
 
Im not worried about the loan itself but I do find it interesting/disturbing that we went out our way to highlight the fact we won’t use it for player acquisitions. . .

Probably to ensure other clubs don't put the prices up for players we bid for.

What Spurs haven't said is that the loan frees up other funds Spurs have for player acquisitions (and haven't said how much we could have as an acquisition budget for obvious reasons) !
 
if our stadium loans are at an interest rate of 2.66% to the banks but this loan is anything from 0.1%-0.5% then instantly Levy has shaved 2% interest minimum off of £175m of our stadium loans payable.

On top of that, inflation sitting well above the 0.5% rate for this facility means that it is gaining value just by Spurs having access to it. With inflation around 2%, that's a 1.5% margin every year...

That boy Daniel's done it again...
:levylol:
 
THFC Stadium is as we know a subsidiary of THFC. All gate revenue is accounted for through the stadium. This loan isn’t going to be used to pay down debt this is additional debt basically to finance the loss of gate and match day income.
No matter which way you look at it ( unless it’s through THFC tinted specs) is money that is going to have to be repaid and irrespective of how much interest that’s going to take some doing. The conditions around the loan are a lot tighter that “ Yep have £175 million do with it what you want”Irrespective the majority of the Bonds are long term commitments which undoubtedly will cost THFC significant sums by way of early redemption penalties

Forget how long or how much the bonds are going to cost or what % of income is attributable to wages when this debt matures repayment is either going to have to come out of income generated or further long term borrowings.

It’s far from good news
 
The stadium isn't a problem. Unfortunately due to covid/economy we will bring in less money in all areas and have less to spend and pay off the stadium in the next two years. After that though it will largely be as before except stuff like conferences will take longer to come back and entertainment stuff less lucrative at first. The stadium debt is already well structured. There is no issue. The covid debt from govt was very cheap money which is why we got it. It was just business prudence not desperation.
 
I suppose we just disagree on what it means to be well set up financially. I think having little to no debt has obviously not been an advantage for the last 30 years, with historically low interest rates and significant asset price appreciation. But things can turn very dramatically and there are signs that period could be coming to an end.
I agree it was a wise decision to convert the capital into bonds. But it is still a relatively high amount of debt to carry into a very unpredictable economic and political environment - and that is when debt really starts to matter in terms of growing any company, and in particular selling it on. The B of E has changed Ts and Cs on its covid related loans and they could well do the same to the Spurs loan. Bonds can also be downgraded and then sold on the open market to other, perhaps more forceful, creditors.
How will the global branding of the club be affected if the Amazon documentary, watched by millions worldwide, make the club a laughing stock?
I'm hopeful all the points you raise will materialise but the virus (a complete outlier, I know) may well have a second wave and that could mean a 50percent collapse in overall club revenues, including the loss of CL revenues, which are significantly higher than Europa.
Spurs ability to trade their way out of the situation is impacted by the fact this is an aging squad, or an unproven one, only Kane would demand a big fee. TV revenues may well significantly drop in general with people deciding to cancel their home Sky sports packages; and not visiting the pub to watch games.
So I suppose the point I'm making is that the analysis undertaken by Levy in terms of taking on debt was based on a historical model of low inflation, rising asset prices and low unemployment; that model IMO is being upturned by the virus. Of course Levy is not to blame for not anticipating such a pandemic; but I think they should have invested more around 10 years ago, and now their late timing and overspending (why didn't we just stick to a £500mill new stadium) may have significant financial repercussions for the future.

Covid was not foreseen by anyone, so can't blame Levy who wanted to deliver the 'best stadium' possible - and some of the overrun comes from Brexit affecting exchange rates putting up prices of the metal used in the stadium, again not foreseen. 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing but when Levy took those decisions they were good decisions.

Spurs have paid off half the cost of the stadium and the other half financed by bonds and Spurs will pay those off by profits over a 23 year period. And it doesn't matter who owns the bonds provided Spurs keep up interest payments (which at circa £16m are not significant) and any other term of the bond (usually not onerous). So I repeat Spurs are in a very good financial position now with a stadium which will deliver cash flow for the foreseeable future - possibly not as much as estimated pre-covid but still significant profits.

And Bank of England cannot change the terms of the bonds, and nor can the US banks who currently own the bonds nor can anybody that buys the bonds from the current owners - .so that's not even a risk.

The only thing on revenues is loss of european revenues - nothing to do with covid - and I doubt these were in Spurs business plans for every year, one in two or three years perhaps. So whilst we want to get into Europe every year, financially its not a problem if we are out every other year.

TV revenues are fixed by contracts for typically 3 or 5 year contracts, so its irrelevant whether there is a reduction in numbers of subscribers in the short term. Its possible the next TV round might be at lower revenues, but that has never happened, and indeed growth has been highest in the sale of overseas tv rights, and that is expected to continue.

So I repeat the effect of covid on Spurs is likely to be short term (eg. clearly the period from March to the end of this season, matchday revenues will be almost zero) and will have limited effect on Spurs abilities to generate some profits. Worth recalling that Spurs last couple of years profits are amongst highest seen in PL, in part due to the lowest wages/revenues in PL, so Spurs will remain better off than probably 75%+ of other PL clubs.

Which means other clubs will go out of business a long time before Spurs
 


A quick reminder of the value that non football events have to Spurs - we will be missing on a few this summer but once they are back we get a lot more revenue in, one of which uses is obviously a boost to transfer funds.
 


A quick reminder of the value that non football events have to Spurs - we will be missing on a few this summer but once they are back we get a lot more revenue in, one of which uses is obviously a boost to transfer funds.


Ideally we do both but they are a money spinner we can use to pay off the loans. But according to most people on here the club isn't going to see the money, its going to be spent on Joe Lewis's new dinghy for his yacht.
 
I will be very happy to be proved wrong, but i just cant see the extra money the stadium makes in the future being invested in the squad, I think the long term goal for Enic is to sell the club and then lease the stadium out to the new owners, doing so they make a fortune on selling us, and then they earn all the extra cash the stadium makes from these extra events. I have no evidence to back this up its just my opinion, but they are an investment company, at the end of the day they are here to make cash.
Surely nobody in their right mind would buy the club without the stadium
 
One area to comment on :

Profit from operations, excluding football trading and before depreciation was £172.7m (2018: £162.5m). Profit for the year after all charges including interest and tax was £68.6m (2018: £113.0m).

Be interesting to see the explanation (possibly in the full accounts when released) for

1. Profit from operations being only £10m better off than 2018 despite an £80m increase in revenues.

My guess would be all of :
- Wembley rent hired on a match by match basis rather than a full season, so cost is higher
- Higher player wages (due to new contracts)
- A number of staff would have been hired in say June 2018 with the expectation that the stadium would open in August/September 2018, even though it only opened in 2019, and
- Not to forget staff hired to start up new businesses such as conference and exhibitions inside the stadium (new business start up costs).
- and not forgetting that the new stadium will have had operating costs of its own (security electricity etc) for the first 9 months or so of the reporting period until the first game, meaning Spurs will have had the costs of not one but two stadiums to bear.

2. Profit after tax and interest being £45m down on last year, even though operating profit is £10m higher.

My guess would be one off costs, possibly one or two player values being written down, but I'd guess the majority of the £55m extra (say £30m) cost is the costs of opening the stadium in training costs and pre-opening costs for new staff, agency fees - all the building costs capitalised but not the 'soft costs' of opening.

Edit - Interest will also be higher on the bank debt which will be higher in the year versus previous year and thus interest also higher. Of course in the following year interest will drop as the bank debt was converted to bonds more than halving the interest rate. Not sure on quantum until the accounts are published but could be £20m ish

Hopefully some explanations in the full accounts, but that's my initial guesses
 
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As you said that profit has deducted all loan repayments and interests for the most expensive domestic stadium ever built,meet Wembley have still eclipsed the rest of the clubs by a mammoth margin.

I think the club are balancing huge debt and trying to keep the team within touching distance extremely well. This season has been a disappointment and a blip but when you see a visual like the bar chart you’ve posted very few can argue that the finances aren’t top notch at the club.
I’m confused, I watched alisdair gold earlier talk about how we won’t be able to sign many players with a 68mill profit.

Thought he actually knew what he was talking about but I guess not lol.
 
I'd take the "not for player acquisitions" more as a guard vs being labelled as evil greedy bastards. Most of th egeneral public will totally miss the aaa part. So see spurs borrow cash that could have been spent on NHS to pay some wanker loads of money to kick a football in an empty stadium..

As others have said, doing this is smart. It's essentially close to free money. And not hard to say its not for players, it's all for rates/vat/non playing staff/finance etc. Then use the cash we would have spent for players (or, being enic, maybe not..)

I've seen comments from other fans saying we should have a transfer ban 🙄

Gregg's have also used the same loan scheme so presumably they are banned from buying flour
 
For a moment.... imagine that this was Levy and not Rummenigge saying this:


Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge insists football must "become more rational" due to the financial impact of coronavirus.

After an enforced two-month break due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bundesliga returned in May, with Europe's other top-five major leagues – with the exception of Ligue 1, which opted to cancel the remainder of its season – resuming in June.

"Football has to try to become a bit more rational in order to be more stable for future crises," Rummenigge, who had previously revealed Bayern would be cautious with their transfer policy over coming seasons, told Handelsblatt.

"In the past 10 years, with this ever-higher-ever-further-ever-faster sums for player transfers and player salaries, football has shot a long way past the goal.

"This can no longer be called rational. That filled every summer break. We have to find better solutions in Europe."

Rummenigge is not convinced, however, that the introduction of a salary cap would be a feasible option, instead preferring more stringent Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations.

"The legal requirements probably do not allow this [a salary cap]," he said.

"No, we need more rationality, and we have to develop FFP in Europe more rigorously with clear, key figures. Originally, it was always about not spending more money than is earned."
Although Levy was saying this before the pandemic.

Coming out with regular comments such as we have to get over our obsession with spending money, it doesn't happen in other countries.

spending money doesn't necessarily equate to being successful

we are unique. We are different.


This is the kind of patronising bullshit that riled so many of us. Particularly as it coincided with the club announcing world record profits again and the revelation of Levy's record breaking bonus / salary.

To try and justify this now, using the hindsight of the coronavirus pandemic, ain't gonna wash, I'm afraid.
 
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