Most liked posts in thread: City financial report

There's a lot of detail here so I'll stick to the main points.

Bottom line is the club made a loss of £299k in the 21/22 season. For some reason, the club prefers to call that a deficit

That's simply the difference between its total revenues of £7.3m and its total costs of £7.6m. The deficit has improved significantly on the previous season when it was £845k but of course that was seriously impacted by Covid. At the end of the day, it's the size of the loss or deficit which illustrates how well the club performs financially. Over time, continuing to run up losses can't be sustained unless it is supported by its owner. The alternative is to improve the commercial revenues or reduce the club's costs.

There are some interesting comments from Alan Biggin on players costs. He says quite correctly that we are well within the SCMP wages cap. It's described in a positive way which helps to explain why our playing budget continues to reduce in real terms every season. We're clearly getting better at keeping within the SCMP wages year on year! For a football club with promotion aspirations, I don't regard it as a positive at all since it is a major determinand of the quality of the playing squad. But that might just be my thinking.

There's a passing comment on the loan provided by Rupp. It confirms that it is £1.7m (and not the figure quoted above in another post) as I've said previously and it was provided before Covid impacted when Rahic was doing his thing. We'll have to wait until the next results are published in Apr 24 to see whether any part of the loan has been paid back during last season.

It's a long piece of analysis from Alan Biggins which is encouraging in that the club is becoming more open about its financial position. I trust this continues. There's some serious slapping of backs in some parts which I don't intend to comment on further!

If there are specific issues where you need further explanation, let me know and I'll try to explain.

 

In the meantime, if you have any particular things which are confusing or difficult to understand, let me know and I'll try to answer them for you later this evening.

 

I cannot promise you somebody with a brain but I'll give you my professional advice. It will have to be later this evening.

@Loyalbantam makes a good point. These financial highlights relate to the 21/22 season. Lots of things will have changed since then. The accounts for last season (22/23) should have been prepared by now but for some reason, the club always waits until the Companies House final deadlne before publishing them at the end of March. Shortly after that deadline in early April 24, the club will publish the latest selected highlights. These highlights show more detail than the the published accounts (which is a good thing). It's always interesting however what is omitted from these 'selected' highlights compared to what the accounts themselves show, such as the club's debt!