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CLUB STATEMENT : AGM & Annual Report : 23/11/17


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2 hours ago, IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER said:

Fascinating - So for the summary for this forum - How much are we currently in debt ?

As I have been told on a number of occasions IHE,  you are unlikely to get an answer on this forum so I suggest you contact the Club direct (where you are also unlikely to get an answer).:ohmy:

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9 minutes ago, caleyboy said:

As I have been told on a number of occasions IHE,  you are unlikely to get an answer on this forum so I suggest you contact the Club direct (where you are also unlikely to get an answer).:ohmy:

I am not an accountant, but Page 8 of the most recent accounts to last May appears to come closest to giving an indication. It states net current liabilities of 147,190 and net assets of 166,918. The club is, of course, several months' trading and also significant donations of capital on from that situation, but I find it difficult to see how a "debt" as such could have accumulated since then, given the lack of assets to secure it against. Difficulties in cash flow may be another matter, though.

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Charles is right.....until the club have the lease and stadium back in their ownership, they have nothing against which to secure any borrowing.  Could this by why the board were so desperate to get it pushed through and to remove Tulloch as the middleman....even if that has ended up with us paying a higher rent?  Would it be reasonable to read between the lines that getting the deal done to allow for further investment actually means allowing them to borrow against the asset?

Surely we're not about to go full circle and land right back in the mess that started all this!  

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8 minutes ago, Kingsmills said:

We will not be borrowing against the security of the stadium if for no other reason than, in the current commercial climate, no lender will entertain lending to a Scottish football club whether or not that borrowing is secured.

 

Ummmm.....Sevco just securing lending from a major financial institute by using their car park as security would indicate that you might be a tad out of touch with the current commercial climate.

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2 hours ago, CaleyD said:

Ummmm.....Sevco just securing lending from a major financial institute by using their car park as security would indicate that you might be a tad out of touch with the current commercial climate.

Not just their car park, but various other assets too. If we have to go down that route, then the game is probably up. 

Edited by HawkeyeTheGnu
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1 hour ago, HawkeyeTheGnu said:

Not just their car park, but various other assets too. If we have to go down that route, then the game is probably up. 

I don't want to drag this thread off course but feel compelled to observe that if there had been an iota of justice in the world, every asset held by the previous Rangers company, long since defunct, would have been sold to ensure that a galaxy of businesses, large and small, were compensated for the millions they were owed.

I'm sure Asda would have been interested in converting Ibrox into a supermarket, suitably liveried in Asda colours. :smile:

That is all.... now back to ICT.

Edited by Charles Bannerman
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12 hours ago, CaleyD said:

Ummmm.....Sevco just securing lending from a major financial institute by using their car park as security would indicate that you might be a tad out of touch with the current commercial climate.

maybe caleyd but let's not forget that their cashflow will be in a far more positive position than ours which right or wrong provides the lender with more comfort. I would imagine our cashflow is pretty negative considering wages and the lack of paying customers

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2 hours ago, caleyboy said:

maybe caleyd but let's not forget that their cashflow will be in a far more positive position than ours which right or wrong provides the lender with more comfort. I would imagine our cashflow is pretty negative considering wages and the lack of paying customers

I’m pretty sure their cash flow will be negative at present, necessitating the loan. What will give the lender comfort is that season ticket money will start turning up in around 3 months time, allowing them to clear the debt. 

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I'm just offering up one hypothesis that fits what we know about the situation. 

Perhaps it's Muirfield Mills who want to secure any investment (from themselves) against an asset?  Given talks about wanting to cut maximum voting rights to 10% per person/organisation then buying more shares would make little sense to them...even though they are trying to encourage others to go that route!

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Dear Board,

Please have a read of this (there will be better examples out there);

http://thurlownunnleague.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Mark-Bradleys-Best-Practice-Guide2.pdf

We should look at all of the variables of the club as a whole that affect fan experience, create a 5 year improvement charter and implement things ranked lowest investment first;

CONTENTS

1. Chairman’s Introduction 3

2. How to use this Guide 5

3. Fan Engagement & Growth 7

4. Promoting Dialogue 9

4.1 The Principles of Successful Consultation 11

4.2 Find Out What Matters Most 13

4.3 Understanding Expectations 15 4.4 Delivering Fan Value 17

4.5 Surveys & Questionnaires 19

4.6 Other Forms of Consultation & Engagement 21

5. Improving the Fan Experience 25

5.1 First Impressions / First Contact 29

5.2 Journey to the Match 43

5.3 Stadium Vicinity 49

5.4 Retail 59

5.5 Refreshments 65

5.6 Inside the Stadium / The Match 73

6. Summary of Top Tips for Fan Engagement 8

Brentford Fan Research:

https://www.brentfordfc.com/news/2017/september/research-piece/

 

What is our 'travel plan' for fans?

http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/sites/default/files/research-files/Door_to_Turnstile_CfBT_FINAL_web.pdf

Some of the basics;

I stopped taking parking in the stadium car park when I saw a parking steward give the fingers to a car turning the wrong way and it took me until 17:25 to get out onto the road.  A complete joke.  Segregate the car park in two, allow traffic to go right and left respectively depending on where you want to go home to, then it will make it quicker to empty.  Provide a new path and steps behind the car park to stop fans interfering with traffic on their walk back to town, delaying everyone involved.  You have to fight your way through the brambles in the early season...it is a shambles.  

Buying a ticket from a window is an extra inconvenience for walk ups.  Imagine an old firm game now with this set up.

Investigate deals with a Harry Gow or Ashers to replace the offering.

Half time entertainment (any!).

Survey the fans based on your ideas.

Check the tannoy & volume

Paint / refurbish what you can

 

Long term strategic options

A novel and cost effective transport solution to get fans to the stadium.  

A sub-let area within our title of the land (IF WE HAVE ANY!), tendered to pub chains etc.  Use the sub-lease lease money to enable an external investor to inject cash, improving fan experience.  

Invest in a hotel/accommodation via sub lease (IF WE HAVE ANY LAND).  Inverness has a shortage of accommodation.

A 3g pitch either built locally or rented in Inverness, run as a soccersixes style league every night of the week in a tiered 'promotion' format, available all year round.  The refs would double as scouts.  The winners of the top league play an ICT team at the end of the season.  (for reference, Soccersixes lease 3g pitches in Inverness and charge £30/game per 6 a side team of which there are up to 12 in a league = £360/night in revenue).  Free publicity, community engagement, extra converted fans, media interest, maybe a player prospect or two and a scout or two wage subsidised... whats not to like?  Soccersixes make it financially viable to fund refs and organisers, so why cant ICT??  Make it available to every Joe bloggs.

The stadium is primarily used 18 times a year.  Develop a plan to share the facilities and make money from them.  Imagine a 3g pitch in the stadium, sub-let to fans or to junior players.  a 3g pitch does away with the wage to 'maintain' the grass.

 

 

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5 hours ago, HawkeyeTheGnu said:

I’m pretty sure their cash flow will be negative at present, necessitating the loan. What will give the lender comfort is that season ticket money will start turning up in around 3 months time, allowing them to clear the debt. 

Effectively mortgaging future income is a recipe for disaster. I sincerely hope that we don't follow Sevco along that particular road to oblivian.

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I think that what I was trying to succinctly put across is that we are NOT in current debt - We are NOT in danger of administration or of going burst - BUT we have been saved once again by injections of cash and the political battle is now being waged between Tulloch and the Muirfield Mills NOT Orion and Tulloch - (although I suspect that Orion and Mr Savage have a side issue involvement). The future aint bright but the future aint shitttee either. The concern is that we do not have the spondoolachs to look at any new investment - a 3G pitch would be fantastic but we cant afford the quality players to grace it. Until things change we are stuck in the Championship - at least.

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From info on companies house, it looks like the £450k loans given at start of the season and now converted to shares were.....

  • £250k - David F Sutherland
  • £50k - David Cameron
  • £150k - £10k from each of the 15 Muirfield Mills members

My understanding is that this is money long since spent and recent requests for assistance are in addition to this.

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15 hours ago, CaleyD said:

From info on companies house, it looks like the £450k loans given at start of the season and now converted to shares were.....

  • £250k - David F Sutherland
  • £50k - David Cameron
  • £150k - £10k from each of the 15 Muirfield Mills members

My understanding is that this is money long since spent and recent requests for assistance are in addition to this.

Well spotted CaleyD. It would be interesting to know how many shares were allocated for this conversion. I would be very surprised if they were £ for £

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36 minutes ago, caleyboy said:

Well spotted CaleyD. It would be interesting to know how many shares were allocated for this conversion. I would be very surprised if they were £ for £

From what I can see (and it was a cursory glance), the £450,000 of loans were converted to 450,000 shares.

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What is the current value of each share though?  This could be a long term investment for the purchasers. 

I feel that ICT will have to be on a continual upward  pathway for these share to increase in value. Common sense, but what happens if the shareholders  decide that support cannot be sustained without at least some kind of generous dividend accruing to them. In the absence of that, or gradual repayment,  are these generous supporters willing to finance the club  way into the future  based on current circumstances? If so, then, BOY, that's a labour of love for sure. ???

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3 hours ago, CaleyD said:

From what I can see (and it was a cursory glance), the £450,000 of loans were converted to 450,000 shares.

That's my reading of it as well. The 28th February confirmation statement makes somewhat different reading from the one 12 months previously.

And I'm sure these conspiracy theories will continue to flow.

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6 minutes ago, Scarlet Pimple said:

What is the current value of each share though?  This could be a long term investment for the purchasers. 

I feel that ICT will have to be on a continual upward  pathway for these share to increase in value. Common sense, but what happens if the shareholders  decide that support cannot be sustained without at least some kind of generous dividend accruing to them. In the absence of that, or gradual repayment,  are these generous supporters willing to finance the club  way into the future  based on current circumstances? If so, then, BOY, that's a labour of love for sure. ???

ICT shareholders will never get a direct return on investment from owning them. Its not really the point for most of us.

If you are lucky, a £1 share is perhaps worth about 10p or 20p. or whatever someone will pay for it. They are not traded on the open market so its all pretty subjective.  

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Was the European injection of over 400.000 pounds used to pay off the then  current debt?

If so, how deep is the  boat  still sunk into the financial mud?

If the underlying assets of the club cannot be used or converted into money how would a future bank loan be paid off?  And, more to the point , why should the Bank continue to generously support the club? If there is no good security either by way of Shareholder personal Guarantees or some form of specifically firm collateral security-. eg. stocks and shares or buildings   or other tangible security?

Would the wealthy supporters that we already have heavily invested in the future of ICT continue to provide cash into a continuously -struggling and even dying business? I think not!   I pity John Robertson and we should go easy on the gent since his heart and mind are definitely well invested in this  club and that's a price that you cannot assess but it may just be too much for him to continue to support emotionally. So the fans must give John the benefit of the doubt and support him to the hilt if this club wants to stay in business.

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Scarlet Pimple said:

Was the European injection of over 400.000 pounds used to pay off the then  current debt?

If so, how deep is the  boat  still sunk into the financial mud?

If the underlying assets of the club cannot be used or converted into money how would a future bank loan be paid off?  And, more to the point , why should the Bank continue to generously support the club? If there is no good security either by way of Shareholder personal Guarantees or some form of specifically firm collateral security-. eg. stocks and shares or buildings   or other tangible security?

Would the wealthy supporters that we already have heavily invested in the future of ICT continue to provide cash into a continuously -struggling and even dying business? I think not!   I pity John Robertson and we should go easy on the gent since his heart and mind are definitely well invested in this  club and that's a price that you cannot assess but it may just be too much for him to continue to support emotionally. So the fans must give John the benefit of the doubt and support him to the hilt if this club wants to stay in business.

 

 

Scarlet - sorry if I have to appear nitpicking, but I have to understand exactly what you mean by your first sentence, including the unfortunate oxymoron "then current debt". I suspect you mean the recent £300k + dished out to last season's Premiership clubs as a result of Celtic's progress in Europe (now there's another oxymoron for you :laugh:) rather than the £373,000 of European Objective 1 money given towards the stadium away back in the mid 90s.

As far as I can see there has not for some years been any significant debt at all for a variety of reasons, prominent among which being that there's no significant asset to secure it against. Until recently, the standard financial M.O. has been to drift from year to year in the hope that windfalls will keep the books pretty well balanced despite increasingly unrealistic payments to players. This came spectacularly unstuck to the extent of £422,000 in 2016-17. This was a fair slice of the reason for going to sympathetic individuals and asking for donations totalling £450,000 in exchange for 450,000 shares.

It's pretty clear that the current board's strategy is to reduce spending considerably and to increase earned income to make the books balance in more realistic sense than before. This would reduce the dependence on unpredictable windfalls and presumably on having to put round the hat to benevolent individuals as well.

As for club shares, the entire shareholding, now around £3.9M, is effectively a huge donation with no return expected by way of dividend (not a chance !) or meaningful resale. In terms of significant resales, back in around 2001 the late Ian Fraser sold over 300,000 shares to Sandy Catto at what is believed to be no more than 50p each. These were among the 500k+ shares that the Catto family later donated to the Hospice and which were subsequently sold (at an unknown price per share although this may emerge in the next Hospice accounts) to the McGilvrays and Alan Savage. This last transaction, in terms of shares numbers, not in cash terms, can be seen by changes in the latest Confirmation Statement.

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36 minutes ago, Charles Bannerman said:

As far as I can see there has not for some years been any significant debt at all for a variety of reasons, prominent among which being that there's no significant asset to secure it against. Until recently, the standard financial M.O. has been to drift from year to year in the hope that windfalls will keep the books pretty well balanced despite increasingly unrealistic payments to players. This came spectacularly unstuck to the extent of £422,000 in 2016-17. This was a fair slice of the reason for going to sympathetic individuals and asking for donations totalling £450,000 in exchange for 450,000 shares.

It's pretty clear that the current board's strategy is to reduce spending considerably and to increase earned income to make the books balance in more realistic sense than before. This would reduce the dependence on unpredictable windfalls and presumably on having to put round the hat to benevolent individuals as well.

I'm pretty sure you were at the AGM Charles, so you will know that (albeit quite tacitly) the Chairman acknowledge that after adjustments which will be required during this financial year, the loss from last year will show as being significantly lower than the £422k shown.  By my reckoning, it will reduce to somewhere very close to break even by the time you factor in the european money and rent write offs etc which were all earned/agreed during the last financial period.

In respect of your comment on reduced spending....where exactly is the evidence of that?  The squad size is pretty much the same, staff levels have increased with the addition of a COO (a position that won't have been filled cheaply) and a number of functions previously undertaken on a voluntary basis are now being done by consultants/agencies.  The £450k already given is in addition to operational income for the current accounting period and there's strong rumours that a similar amount is required on top of that to see us through the season.  So the £450k wasn't to plug any previous hole...and, indeed, the accounts show the club had cash in hand at the end of the 2017 accounting period.

You'll not get much argument that the club has operated for a long while with a £200k to £250k annual "hole" that requires some good fortune or generosity to fill.  If you use that as a measure of where the club is now, and even if you ignore the rumoured need for additional money, we're already twice as far into the hole than we normally go.

For a board who claimed to have a plan that would get the club operating entirely within its own means and who were going to remove this need to "put round the hat"....they don't actually seem to be doing a very good job!!

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15 minutes ago, CaleyD said:

I'm pretty sure you were at the AGM Charles, so you will know that (albeit quite tacitly) the Chairman acknowledge that after adjustments which will be required during this financial year, the loss from last year will show as being significantly lower than the £422k shown.  By my reckoning, it will reduce to somewhere very close to break even by the time you factor in the european money and rent write offs etc which were all earned/agreed during the last financial period.

In respect of your comment on reduced spending....where exactly is the evidence of that?  The squad size is pretty much the same, staff levels have increased with the addition of a COO (a position that won't have been filled cheaply) and a number of functions previously undertaken on a voluntary basis are now being done by consultants/agencies.  The £450k already given is in addition to operational income for the current accounting period and there's strong rumours that a similar amount is required on top of that to see us through the season.  So the £450k wasn't to plug any previous hole...and, indeed, the accounts show the club had cash in hand at the end of the 2017 accounting period.

You'll not get much argument that the club has operated for a long while with a £200k to £250k annual "hole" that requires some good fortune or generosity to fill.  If you use that as a measure of where the club is now, and even if you ignore the rumoured need for additional money, we're already twice as far into the hole than we normally go.

For a board who claimed to have a plan that would get the club operating entirely within its own means and who were going to remove this need to "put round the hat"....they don't actually seem to be doing a very good job!!

well said

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1 hour ago, CaleyD said:

 after adjustments which will be required during this financial year, the loss from last year will show as being significantly lower than the £422k shown.  By my reckoning, it will reduce to somewhere very close to break even by the time you factor in the european money and rent write offs etc which were all earned/agreed during the last financial period.

 The £450k already given is in addition to operational income for the current accounting period and there's strong rumours that a similar amount is required on top of that to see us through the season. 

I don't think it really matters when a rent write-off is agreed. It's surely when it's actually written off that it disappears from the accounts and this process is only being finalised now. Items "missing" the accounts deadline is an annual factor, so these 2016-17 accounts may well also have benefited from something similar at the start of the accounting period. In terms of cost cutting, the most excessive wages have been steadily been getting removed from the player pool and, as we were told at the AGM, wages have dropped to as little as £250 a week. Also, if all that much has been bounced forward to 2017-18, then that will presumably reduce the need for whatever subsidy will be required in the current season - albeit a season of reduced Championship income streams.

I suspect that what we are again effectively talking about here is that the inner Moray Firth isn't capable of sustaining two upper league football clubs and hence two player pools being paid far more than can sensibly be justified in relation to their ability to generate earned income.

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1 hour ago, CaleyD said:

I'm pretty sure you were at the AGM Charles, so you will know that (albeit quite tacitly) the Chairman acknowledge that after adjustments which will be required during this financial year, the loss from last year will show as being significantly lower than the £422k shown.  By my reckoning, it will reduce to somewhere very close to break even by the time you factor in the european money and rent write offs etc which were all earned/agreed during the last financial period.

In respect of your comment on reduced spending....where exactly is the evidence of that?  The squad size is pretty much the same, staff levels have increased with the addition of a COO (a position that won't have been filled cheaply) and a number of functions previously undertaken on a voluntary basis are now being done by consultants/agencies.  The £450k already given is in addition to operational income for the current accounting period and there's strong rumours that a similar amount is required on top of that to see us through the season.  So the £450k wasn't to plug any previous hole...and, indeed, the accounts show the club had cash in hand at the end of the 2017 accounting period.

You'll not get much argument that the club has operated for a long while with a £200k to £250k annual "hole" that requires some good fortune or generosity to fill.  If you use that as a measure of where the club is now, and even if you ignore the rumoured need for additional money, we're already twice as far into the hole than we normally go.

For a board who claimed to have a plan that would get the club operating entirely within its own means and who were going to remove this need to "put round the hat"....they don't actually seem to be doing a very good job!!

The quarter of a million pound 'hole' in terms annual finances pertains when we are in the top tier with a number of games with two or three thousand away fans, a bigger home support, higher ticket prices, greater commercial income and much larger TV revenue.

The inbuilt deficit for a mediocre season in the Championship is more like a million pounds. In my view the current board are doing a reasonable job in very challenging circumstances.

In my opinion the use of professional consultants rather than enthusiastic amateurs in certain areas is a step in the right direction and will pay dividends in years to come.

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