ENIC...

[shelfboy68]

As far as I understood it it had to be paid back in a year or two. I may be wrong about that though

Really that's a lot of money I wonder whether a player or two will be sold to repay that.

 

[danielneeds]

Really that's a lot of money I wonder whether a player or two will be sold to repay that.

I don’t think the plan is to use it all. It’s like an overdraft buffer if the crisis goes on.

 

[thebenjamin]

Really that's a lot of money I wonder whether a player or two will be sold to repay that.

My understanding was that we took the dough as a precaution because we could.

 

[shelfboy68]

I don’t think the plan is to use it all. It’s like an overdraft buffer if the crisis goes on.

Right got it thanks for the info.

 

[AberdeenYid]

As far as I understood it it had to be paid back in a year or two. I may be wrong about that though

It should be paid back in April, but we can redraw for a further year. It’s at 0.5% interest, so hugely under market rates.

I think it’s a case of better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

 

[daryl hannah]

it's circa £800k interest

 

[AberdeenYid]

it's circa £800k interest

The equivalent of a big shop at Waitrose for Tanguy.

 

[King of Otters]

Personally I don’t want Bezos or Amazon to have anything to do with the club for the simple fact that their brand is so universal it would pretty much eclipse the identity of the football club.

We’d become Amazon FC. Fuck that.

 

[RichieS]

There's not really any new arguments in this anti-Levy/ENIC article however it is well written - perhaps a bit lengthy. The points are presented well. If you read the article you'll realise it's about us being rich, not poor...

To Dare is Too Dear - World of Hotspur

New season, same story. Spurs are once again mired in a their annual cycle of struggling to get rid of deadwood and having no money to spend.

worldofhotspur.com

I don't necessarily agree that automatically raising wages to turnover (of which we are the lowest in the league) is the key to success - but I do agree with the idea that signing Nkoudou rather than Mané won't get you a trophy, whatever the financial issues.

I also think it was important to build the stadium to afford wages and move the club forward. But I don't think we needed to build a £1billion stadium, perhaps (we're told this is going to cripple us financially for the foreseeable).

The profits involved are the alarming bit.

I have no idea where this narrative has come from. Does anyone know? If I had to guess, I'd say it's assumption based on what happened for Arsenal. But their stadium financing is now regarded as a pretty bad deal. Even with our repayments being £30-40m per year, we're still going to have more money available than we did before.

If anyone at the club tries to spin a yarn based on being skint because of the stadium, the accounts will show them to be telling porkies. The fact that we've spent in the region of £120m net on players since 1/7/19 is rather suggestive of the opposite of financially crippled (present unrelated-to-the-stadium-debt circumstances notwithstanding!).

 

[Neon_Knight_]

I also think it was important to build the stadium to afford wages and move the club forward. But I don't think we needed to build a £1billion stadium, perhaps (we're told this is going to cripple us financially for the foreseeable).

When the stadium was fairly close to completion, the estimated total spend for the Northumberland Development Project was £850m, with the stadium only amounting to £350-400m of the project spend (i.e. less than half!).

The other £450-500m covered the rest of the project, which included but was not limited to:
New club HQ
Extreme sports centre (revenue source)
Hotels (revenue source)
Supermarket (revenue source)
Affordable housing (revenue source)
Luxury apartments (revenue source)
Transport infrastructure
Community medical centre

The project was a huge investment, but many of the non-stadium elements (each a multi-million pound investment) will ultimately result in profits.

When you consider what Emirates, Wembley and the Olympic Stadium cost, then factor in the retractable pitch for NFL and superior suitability/attractiveness for other events that will bring revenue (boxing, concerts etc.), £350-400m is not an expensive stadium.

We can only speculate what the actual final cost was, as Brexit and the safety issues caused increases towards the end, but the club hasn't reported the exact figures. My assumption is the media rounded it up to £1b because they like to sensationalise.

 

[sausage]

When the stadium was fairly close to completion, the estimated total spend for the Northumberland Development Project was £850m, with the stadium only amounting to £350-400m of the project spend (i.e. less than half!).

The other £450-500m covered the rest of the project, which included but was not limited to:
New club HQ
Hotels (revenue source)
Supermarket (revenue source)
Affordable housing (revenue source)
Luxury apartments (revenue source)
Transport infrastructure

The project was a huge investment, but many of the non-stadium elements (each a multi-million pound investment) will ultimately result in profits.

When you consider what Emirates, Wembley and the Olympic Stadium cost, then factor in the retractable pitch for NFL and superior suitability/attractiveness for other events that will bring revenue (boxing, concerts etc.), £350-400m is not an expensive stadium.

We can only speculate what the actual final cost was, as Brexit and the safety issues caused increases towards the end, but the club hasn't reported the exact figures. My assumption is the media rounded it up to £1b because they like to sensationalise.

Also, DL bought a load of equipment didn't he? I recall he bought the cranes because they had good resale value, instead of hiring them.

I remember the price of steel went up and that affected a lot, so there was some clever procurement that went on.

 

[Trotter]

When the stadium was fairly close to completion, the estimated total spend for the Northumberland Development Project was £850m, with the stadium only amounting to £350-400m of the project spend (i.e. less than half!).

The other £450-500m covered the rest of the project, which included but was not limited to:
New club HQ
Extreme sports centre (revenue source)
Hotels (revenue source)
Supermarket (revenue source)
Affordable housing (revenue source)
Luxury apartments (revenue source)
Transport infrastructure
Community medical centre

The project was a huge investment, but many of the non-stadium elements (each a multi-million pound investment) will ultimately result in profits.

When you consider what Emirates, Wembley and the Olympic Stadium cost, then factor in the retractable pitch for NFL and superior suitability/attractiveness for other events that will bring revenue (boxing, concerts etc.), £350-400m is not an expensive stadium.

We can only speculate what the actual final cost was, as Brexit and the safety issues caused increases towards the end, but the club hasn't reported the exact figures. My assumption is the media rounded it up to £1b because they like to sensationalise.

£ 1.157 billion was transferred from Assets under construction to Fixed Assets during the year July 2018 to June 2019, so that figure will not include Supermarket (which was completed before July 2018), housing, hotels or anything you state, but can roughly be said to be the final cost of the stadium. See note 9 of our 2019 accounts.
That is one hell of an expensive stadium, or dare I say it unlimited budget vanity project.

 

[Neon_Knight_]

Also, DL bought a load of equipment didn't he? I recall he bought the cranes because they had good resale value, instead of hiring them.

I remember the price of steel went up and that affected a lot, so there was some clever procurement that went on.

Yes, cranes that were in short supply / high demand. Buying the equipment increased the initial investment (and reported project spend), but saved us millions in the long run. Will have covered a chunk of Levy's bonus at the end of the project.

 

[Neon_Knight_]

£ 1.157 billion was transferred from Assets under construction to Fixed Assets during the year July 2018 to June 2019, so that figure will not include Supermarket, housing, hotels or anything you state, but can roughly be estimated to be the final cost of the stadium. See note 9 of our 2019 accounts.
That is one hell of an expensive stadium, or dare I say it vanity project.

Was everything other than the stadium itself 100% complete in time to be reported in the 2017-18 financials then? I believe other extensive developments were ongoing at that point.

 

[Trotter]

Was everything other than the stadium itself 100% complete in time to be reported in the 2017-18 financials then? I believe other extensive developments were ongoing at that point.

Well of what you mentioned, the supermarket was, Lilywhite House was, and the rest like hotels, apartments, affordable housing, museum haven't happened yet. You can safely say the stadium alone cost well in excess of £ 1 billion (as I say, basically an unlimited budget vanity project, vastly overspent against what was required)

 

[Neon_Knight_]

£ 1.157 billion was transferred from Assets under construction to Fixed Assets during the year July 2018 to June 2019, so that figure will not include Supermarket (which was completed before July 2018), housing, hotels or anything you state, but can roughly be said to be the final cost of the stadium. See note 9 of our 2019 accounts.
That is one hell of an expensive stadium, or dare I say it unlimited budget vanity project.

If you're right, I don't see how our reported profits, revenue and loans / bonds tally up with the project spend. Isn't there a nine figure gap to account for?

 

[Trotter]

If you're right, I don't see how our reported profits, revenue and loans / bonds tally up with the project spend. Isn't there a nine figure gap to account for?

Not at all, you are mixing up profit with cash. The stadium gets depreciated over its useful life (maybe 50 years) so you would only see c. £22m depreciation for each of the next 50 years in the accounts hitting the profit, plus interest on the loan in relation to the stadium.
The paying for the stadium is cashflow effect rather than a P&L thing, Basically a £1.1 bn stadium, we borrowed roughly half from the banks, and used accumulated cashflow made by the club in the prior years for the difference (and underinvested in the team by doing that)

 

[Neon_Knight_]

Not at all, you are mixing up profit with cash. The stadium gets depreciated over its useful life (maybe 50 years) so you would only see c. £22m depreciation for each of the next 50 years in the accounts hitting the profit, plus interest on the loan.
The paying for the stadium is cashflow effect rather than a P&L thing, Basically a £1.1 bn stadium, we borrowed roughly half from the banks, and used accumulated cashflow made by the club in the prior years for the difference (and underinvested in the team by doing that)

I understand the depreciation (I've managed public sector construction projects). Where I perceive a gap is the club's cashflow stretching to cover circa £550m cash (half £1.1bn not covered by loans), on top of other project costs for the developments surrounding the stadium. If the stadium itself cost £1.1bn, the overall project will total £1.5-2bn. The land acquisitions will already have been paid out of the club's cashflow well before stadium works commenced. The club also spent over £200m on the new training facilities (separate to the NDP) not long before the NDP got underway, so that would have impacted upon cashflow too.

 

[sausage]

Well of what you mentioned, the supermarket was, Lilywhite House was, and the rest like hotels, apartments, affordable housing, museum haven't happened yet. You can safely say the stadium alone cost well in excess of £ 1 billion (as I say, basically an unlimited budget vanity project, vastly overspent against what was required)

Sounds very speculative - you're making an assumption as to what the 'assets' were, and what the definition of 'under construction' is, I'm sure.

I'm not sure how we ever get from "ENIC don't care and won't spend money" to "vanity project". It reads very much like the agenda was (paraphrasing over the years):

"They'll never do it"
"They'll never start it"
"They'll never complete it"
"They'll just do the minimum"
"It'll just be some generic bowl"
"Nothing to say the club own it - it's ENIC siphoning assets"
...

"Decadent vanity project"

These sorts of things don't sound like the narrative of a supporter, but more like a rival supporter. What's up with the general tone? The way some people go on in here would make you think ENIC were an evil "pharma" company out of some US Drama/Film.

 

[jurgen]

There's valid questions about whether a £1bn stadium was overkill for what we needed as a club but only time will tell I suppose. It certainly seems a tasty amount unless it becomes a permanent NFL home.

Likewise, it's hard to get too excited about tales of us buying up cranes if we can't buy up top players - we're all ultimately here to support a football club, not a heavy machinery trader.