PAFC reported a loss of £1.46 million for 2013......they seem quite casual about it....but should we worry or not.....over to you notDistant.
I worry when I hear the words loss and Argyle in the same sentence these days. Apparently there should be a plus this time around due mainly to the price of pasties being increased by 20p and the Janners still not being able to resist.
Just been reading the dross on pasoti about this- mainly written by buffoons who seem to think they can translate the limited accounts that are in the public domain into another PAFC bad news story. From the little info available it seems that we made less of a loss than we did the previous year which can only be a step in the right direction......it is all old news anyway as I think it was to the period end of Dec 2013 so they are nearly a year old. At the risk of being accused of sticking my head in the stand there is bugger all I can do about it so I ain't going to waste time worrying if this is a good or bad news story....or perhaps no story at all? It is probably me but I have absolutely no idea why AFT intend inviting the club to explain the accounts- If i were the owner i'd tell them to go away and worry about something that they might actually be able to do something positive about instead of continually seeking out snippets of news with which to beat the club up about-clearly some people have too much time on their hands.
Surprise surprise but I actually agree with that. Even with my limited knowledge of company finances I can understand that if a business is making a loss, like the Country is also, and steps are taken to reduce the loss then it is not a bad thing. I think most rational people understand the concept of reducing losses and heading towards a profit in the long term and that it is unusual to turn things around without that sort of step being taken first. However, most people would also understand the nervousness of supporters given the last 5 years. I do wonder at the AFT sometimes though. If somebody sat them down and went into these accounts with a fine toothed comb and explained every last penny, what would they do about it? Not a lot I suspect and they certainly couldn't change history because that is exactly what these accounts already are.
You don't need to be a genius to understand that making losses is A Bad Thing but as usual, there isn't enough information here to support a proper opinion. Losses are less than the 15 months to December 2013. On the face of it that's good because the extra 3 months would have been September to December 2012 i.e. during the playing season. There were 3 months extra match income in 2012 than there were in 2013 but losses are still down from £2.2m to £1.5m. On the other hand we have no idea what non-recurring costs there might be e.g. Fletcher was sacked around the end of 2012, what year did his pay-off land in? It could be they are in 2012 profits as the decision to sack him was taken before the end of the year but he was actually paid off in 2013 cashflow. There were probably other non-recurring costs arising from the restructuring after administration. We've got no idea how much or how they were accounted for. I think that ticket income was being forward-sold as there was a debt to Ticketmaster in the administration. How did that unwind and is forward-selling still going on? Given all of the above and more besides that we don't understand, we have to rely on the statement that operating losses are being reduced and that the club will be cash generative by the end of this season. There's a saying that "turnover is vanity, profit is fantasy but cash flow is reality". It's as Mr Micawber said, if there's more cash coming in than there is going out, things are OK no matter what the profit & loss account says. This isn't green-tinted glasses, you really can't tell much from this so you have to believe what you've been told. I take it you all saw that Brent has been appointed chairman of Plymouth University?
Oh no!!!! Just when the Uni was doing well...... I had a read of pasoti to see what lyndhurst was on about and to be fair there weren't actually that many pouring scorn of these accounts. Somebody tried it as an opening shot and was proptly shot to pieces by a number cruncher. Those that put informed posts up rather than emotive ones all seem to be saying what you have notdistant, these accounts aren't worth much at all. As far as I'm concerned I'll stick to my original thought. Debt is bad but doing something about them and reducing it is good and positive.
One thing I would say is that the report says that: "Whilst the losses have increased the net liabilities of the club by £964,000 in the year, the burden of the increased indebtedness has fallen largely on the existing shareholders," Now normally, the shareholders don't bear the burden of losses within a limited company so either that means Brent is funding the losses directly in cash or perhaps he's in some sort of guarantor position. Also, the £800k council loan is: "secured with collateral provided by club shareholders". So that might be a charge over something Brent owns - the development land perhaps. Either way, as the main shareholder, Brent is either continuing to put cash in or putting things he owns at risk.
So the accounts report.....sounds a little like.....'how long is a bit of string'.... to laymen like me.
Yes the balance of the PASOTI thread is now a bit better after some sanity was injected-it just hacks me off when every snippet of half a story is analysed by some (not on here) to see if it can be spun into an anti argyle/JB soundbite. As far as the Uni is concerned, I think it is probably a decent appointment-my understanding of these things is that most of his posts probably don't take more than a few days of his time a month. Normally individuals are appointed into these posts for their business acumen , contacts and general experience and the CEOs(or equivalent) actually do the day to day management. Talking about this to a colleague yesterday and he cited someone he knows who has 12 of these type of roles-compared with this JB is still a lightweight.
You haven't obviously been keeping right up to date notdistant ref the loan. The collateral is the bit of land sold to Brent by PCC without which the new build could not proceed. You know the one, the new build that hasn't been built yet. Now somehow this land has doubled in value and is worth far more than paid and is being put up to secure a loan off PCC who sold this land presumably cheaply in the first place. Well that's what it looks like to me anyway. I haven't seen anything with Brent's name on it prove to be "successful" just yet lyndhurst. Loads of maybe could be's but very little completed and filed just yet. I understand he would be simply a figurehead and not have hands on at the Uni. Aren't figureheads the things that always without exception go down with the ship and usually hit the bottom first?
I did read the rather vague statement the club issued on the official site and then flicked over to Pasoti for a read of their thread on the subject. Wild speculation and guesswork is unhelpful but I do understand fans frustrations when only being dripfed titbits of information, the club don't help themselves at times, either say nothing or be more open and give the fans some facts to digest and comment on.
