By David Owen
April 2 – Tottenham Hotspur, the north London football club currently struggling to sustain a challenge for a top-four Premier League finish after a season of considerable change, has announced a small profit for the year to end-June 2013.
The White Hart Lane-based club also said in a statement that a £40 million interest-free loan, provided by majority shareholder ENIC, was to be converted, subject to shareholder approval, into non-voting preference shares. It had “negligible” net debt and financing for the “material ongoing costs” of taking its new stadium project to the next stage.
The club described this as a “major development that will present ongoing challenges”. Subject to those challenges being “manageable” it anticipated going out to tender for construction “late this year”. This would make a stadium opening date of summer 2017 “feasible”.
Daniel Levy, chairman, said the club’s financial position was “key to ensuring we can continue to thrive both on and off the pitch…
“We cannot stress strongly enough how critical the new stadium is over the long term,” Levy continued. “We have the smallest-capacity stadium of any club in the top 20 clubs in Europe, let alone the current top four Premier League clubs, and given we now operate within UEFA Financial Fair Play rules, an increased capacity stadium and associated revenues is fundamental to supporting the future ambitions and consistent achievement at the top of the game.”
Spurs have had to learn to cope this season without the talismanic presence of Gareth Bale, sold to Real Madrid after the financial year-end for an undisclosed fee thought to be between €90 million and €100 million. The club also parted company in December with its Portuguese head coach, André Villas-Boas, replacing him with Tim Sherwood, a former player.
Profit after interest and tax was said to have come to £1.5 million, against a loss of £4.3 million the previous year. Profit from operations, excluding football trading and before depreciation, edged up to £23.4 million (2012: £23 million). Revenue rose 2% to £147.4 million.
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