Almost time for the accounts

[roger_ramjet]

so lets have a few guesses as to what the real underlying result will be.

Information:
Year to 30 June 2017 is what is covered so it would include sale of Hendrick & Hughes but exclude the sale of Ince
2016 underlying operating loss £ 27m
2015 underlying operating loss £ 13m
4 years prior to that the figures were £ 7-8m each year
The trees lost around £ 20m in each of the last 2 years
All the above exclude the results of financial engineering by owners to write off loans etc

I trust Romanis will arrange a suitable prize!

I will kick it off by punting for £ 18.3 million loss but hey, its just plucking figures out of the air

Well now, this is interesting. It seems that the accounts do include the sale of Tom Ince, even though it was announced just after the year end. The "headline" result was a loss of £ 7.9 million, although heaven knows what financial engineering went on to get to that result (ie the loss last year halved after some tinkering), but if we assume Tom went for around 10-10.5 million the loss would have been around £18m if he were fully written off at that date. maybe £ 16m if he still had some residual intangible value.

not a bad guess, he says smugly. Put the MILF on the next boat from Singapore Romanis!

[roger_ramjet]

But this means that the year to June 2018 could be severe as we bought Lawrence for what, £7m? This was funded from the sale of Ince but in accounting terms there is a mismatch as the sale and purchase fell into two different financial years. In effect the Ince money had already gone before we started our pre season 2017-18 spending: please note R4J/DDD if you are reading in exile - you were told but refused to believe, wanting to spend it again on Jota. Good job that never happened, eh - but now you see why.

Even with the revenue from Hendrick, Hughes and Ince, net of Vydra, Anya and Nugent (plus £ 16.2m), we still made an £ 8m loss - then shelled out for Lawrence with no matching incoming fees.

Or, to put it another way, if we had not peddled our stars, we would have lost upward of £ 25 million on recurrent trading. So for 2017-18 its fair to say that this may persist, and with no real asset sales to offset the purchase of Lawrence, Jerome and the new "lo fee hi wage" over 30 mercenaries I'd say we are looking down the ragged end of a costly year if we don't go up.

And looking to the future, if we don't go up, we wont have any operating profit to reinvest (unless Mel feels very very generous) and no real income generating assets to sell. The pot looks empty - this year may be a last hurrah - and everyone knows you cannot win anything with kids.

Sorry that's a bit gloomy but one gets the feeling that the timing of the comments about Sam Rush were perhaps a convenient obfuscation.

[AdiSalisbury]

Yeah thanks for that Roger, isn't there a pink sparkly version you could give us?!

[roger_ramjet]

That was the pink sparkly version