A summary of the major topics covered
Managing director John Nixon gave an overview to the background of the way the football club has to operate at this moment in time.
Turnover
Back in March this year we could see that our turnover was going to reduce from £4.97m for 2010/11 to around £4.17m for the 2011/12 reporting period. That was a projected reduction of approximately 17% of our turnover.
We had previously moved from year 2009/10 from a turnover figure of £5.04m to that £4.97m figure - a reduction of 1.4%. Bear in mind that we had made it to Wembley during both of those reporting periods.
As it turned out the actual reduction for the 2011/12 period, having been projected at 17%, was 13% with a turnover figure of £4.32m. That was mostly due to reduced cup income and to the fact that we didn’t make quite as much on player sales.
To put that in perspective in terms of League One, the highest projected income for a League One club for 2011/12 was £7.8m. The lowest projected income was £2.4m. Carlisle United were eleventh of the 24 clubs with the projected figure we supplied in November 2011.
Cup Income
Using the same reporting periods, we had a combined cup income of £1.08m in 2009/10. That was thanks to the trip to Wembley to face Southampton and to a run in the FA Cup which took us to Everton.
The Wembley game against Brentford and the associated payments from the other cup competitions earned us £0.52m in 2010/11. Last year – 2011/12 – the cup competitions earned us £0.04m. It is very difficult to predict accurately what the cup income will be year-on-year but, with us now out of all three competitions, we should get somewhere in the region of £0.16m for 2012/13.
Retail Worries
This has been a concern this year.
In 2010/11 we had a shop income of £280,000. That dropped to £269,000 for 2011/12. As you can see, through that two year period the Blues Store almost held its own.
We opened a concession in Debenhams which had to be closed down in June this year for two particular reasons. Firstly, it had only taken £35,000 and, following payments which had to be taken out of that, it reduced the takings significantly.
Added to that was the fact that the location of the concession was due to be moved to the far corner on the bottom floor within the store and we felt that would have a further impact on performance.
As far as our replica kit is concerned, we are committed to launching a new home and away kit every season. We have staggered those between May and July and we will continue to do that throughout our commitment to JD Sports. We know this isn’t ideal but it is very much in line with what we see in the Premier League, and the majority of kit suppliers now structure their deals in exactly the same way.
The concern is obviously that we have a trend of falling figures – but the positive side of it is that our online sales are going up. This reflects the way that many people are now doing their shopping.
Direct Wages
The wages on the playing side remain our biggest outgoing, as you would expect for a football club. In 2010/11 it was just over £3.025m out of a total turnover of just under £5m. That meant we were paying approximately 61% of our turnover in playing staff wages.
In 2011/12 that reduced to just over £2.75m – a reduction of 10%. However, because the turnover had dropped to £4.32m that equated to 64% of our turnover going to playing staff wages. We have targeted a further 10% reduction for 2012/13.
Of the 24 league one clubs the highest projected club wage costs for 2011/12 was £6.87m. The lowest projected club wage costs was £1.174m. Carlisle United were twelfth in terms of projected wage costs in November 2011.
The largest playing squad during that same period was 41 players. The smallest playing squad was 19 players. Carlisle United were eighteenth in terms of squad size.
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