The annual accounts of Charlton Athletic Football Company Ltd for the year ending June 30th 2019 were posted on the CAFC website this week. They have not yet been filed at Companies House because the club took advantage of an extension offered on account of the Coronavirus outbreak. In a nutshell, the club lost £10m during season 2018/19.
The full financial statements can be seen here:
https://www.cafc.co.uk/uploads/5e9fcceff793902b2ae2b47f76700157
- In operational terms the financial year produced an outcome almost exactly replicating the outcome for the previous season - a loss of £10.073m (compared to £10.095m in 17/18).
- Income from ticket sales, broadcast fees and commercial activities rose by £500k to £7.8m largely because of the extra income from the play-off games.
- Operating expenses (excluding depreciation and player amortisation) were reduced by £1.1m to £15.8m. Of this, salaries increased by £200k to £10.4m although the average number of employees reduced from 148 to 136.
- Once depreciation and player amortisation are taken into account the operating loss for the year increases to £11.9m. This compares favourably to the equivalent c.£13.3m loss in 2017/18.
- Interest of £1.04m (£859k payable to parent company Baton 2010 Ltd) increases the loss to c.£13m
- Profit from player registration disposals amounts to £2.9m (Karlan Grant plus contingent clauses in the sales of Gudmundssen, Gomez and Cousins). This is £1.3m less than in 2017/18 (£4.2m) but it reduces overall loss to £10.073m.
- Just under £67m was owed to parent company Baton 2010 Ltd at 30th June 2019
(NB - We note the statement at the top of the Directors' Report on page 4 that "the profit for the year after taxation amounted to £10.07m". We fear that this is a misprint, not an accounting miracle!)
There are two significant post balance sheet events (ie - things that have happened between 30th June 2019 and the date of the accounts being signed off) noted in the accounts.
- There has been £4.176m income from disposal of player registrations. This presumably arises from Anfernee Dijksteel fee plus other contingent fees)
- On 27th December 2019 the company issued 21,494,704 ordinary shares at par to capitalise the same amount of debt owed to Baton 2010 Ltd. On 23rd January 2020 the issued shares in the company were sold to East Street Investments. Football finance expert Kieran Maguire tweeted this morning that "appears that Duchatelet converted £21m of loans before the sale to East Street which suggests he is still owed about £48m".