Arsenal announce record profits
Arsenal’s parent company (Arsenal Holdings plc) earned record profits of £56m, they announced on Thursday.
The figure concerning the year to May 2010 marks an increase of £10.5m of the pre-tax profits of the previous 12 months. A major factor in the increase in revenue has been due to several property deals being closed by the firm.
The club’s chief executive Ivan Gazdis told reporters that: “The group has made good progress in the last year.”
The company revealed that it had sold 362 apartments at its Highbury Square development, on the site of their old stadium in North London. The English Premier League club also said that it had wiped out all of the debt on the development.
Property arm successful
The sales of the apartments along with a nearby social housing site helped to bring in £156.9m of revenue from the property arm of the club’s parent company, while it was also able to repay £129.6m of its loan debt to the bank.
Overall debt of the company fell from a figure of £297.7m down to £135.6m, while turnover increased from £313m by £66.9m to £379.9m.
The company’s operating profits before depreciation and the trading of players in the football part of the business dropped, however, from £62.7m to £56.8m as a result of a rise in wage costs.
Meanwhile, the club increased their profit margin on the trades of players, having increased from £2.9m to £13.6m largely down to the sales of striker Emmanuel Adebayor (for a fee believed to be around £25m) and defender Kolo Toure (£14m) to Manchester City
last summer.
Though the property side business has proven to be successful for the company, Gazidis added that the competitive nature of football made that arm of the firm less stable.
He said that: “The competitive landscape makes it ever tougher to achieve success on the field and standing still is simply not, and never has been, an option for the club. It is important that we continue to develop a vibrant and robust business with sufficient
revenues to sustain success.”
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