I wonder if that’s top-speed for a turtle or average speed. And what kind of turtle? A little one that fits in your hand or one that’s say, 30cm across the shell?
And over what distance? Maybe it can scramble along at 3-4mph for 20-30 metres to escape a predator, but I doubt it could keep it up for a few km’s (not that it would need to).
Obviously we’d prefer to win a flag, but it’s some consolation (or at least somewhat reassuring) that the clubs finances are in order.
With our finances chugging along we can invest in our football department and know that our on field failures aren’t due to poor financial management (unless of course we sacrifice on field performance for profit, such as sending our Captain to sell memberships or meet sponsors instead of training, etc).
We know we have good facilities and our players are looked after, and on paper it looks like we are primed for an excellent season on-field.
ASADA/WADA related costs in 2018 = zero $$
Xavier presented a glass half full summary of the financials today and certainly the final number is a positive one, but a glass half empty summary when digging a little deeper would go something like this …
Overall revenue is down, merchandise is a long way down, match receipts are down despite the saga hangover being burnt off, and expenses are miles up.
Take out the membership bump of net $1.6m, Fujitsu deal bump YOY presumably over $500k (first year of the new much richer post-saga deal signed in 2017) and one off sale of Beyond Sport of $650k and it leaves a pretty smelly number.
The business as a whole clearly didn’t perform at all well financially in its daily operations, but the members came through providing a huge cash injection and a couple of one off large profits bumped up the bottom line.
Really a pretty poor year financially considering the launching pad that was in place on 1 November 2017.
There must at least be some concern at the large increase in staff wages (and I notice mainly “key staff”) given it resulted in worse performance on field for the core business of footy. I remember when Xavier presented the financials last year he was spruiking about the club having undergone are large cost base reduction after it had been running a bit fat, seems all of that and then a bit more has been chewed up this year, presumably a fair bit of it by him or other executives who would qualify as ‘key staff’.
The other interesting thing about that is that I think I remember the club COO was let go midway through the financial year and I don’t think that role was replaced? I imagine he would’ve been well paid so that should’ve been a large amount taken off the overall wage bill.
Seems someone has had a very healthy pay rise!
I would be enquiring why the increase in “administrative expenses”.
Getting M/ships etc out on time, … better customer service.
Money well spent you’d say.
It’s very general, very general.
Definitely think your looking to pick holes in what is a solid result. The footy club is a not for profit organisation that should be focusing on winning football matches. On the basis we are not losing money and our leverage has come down I would not be too concerned. Also we all know you don’t win flags by banking huge profits.
With regards to the quoted comment, have you considered that some of the increase in key staff cost may have been the result of making someone redundant? If you look at staff entitlements the non current provision has decreased. This provision would only be for long service leave and wouldn’t consider any redundancy pay. Put this together I think the increase to compensation to key management personal can easily justifiable, rather than assuming someone got a pay raise.
Don’t forget admin expenses would be used to get around the soft cap of footy op costs to avoid the rubbish AFL equalisation tax. Maybe Luke Ball’s role is an admin expense, given we know he isn’t in the footy department.
I wish we could make losses and not be able to rapidly pay off debt, because then the AFL and governments would be nice to us.
Most likely something like that I guess.
The downturn in revenue was mainly due to the donations and AFL fund, hardly cause for concern
Spongy floors don’t grow on trees you know.*
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*that may be incorrect. In fact it’s wrong. But, worth posting nonetheless. Thank you.
A Cork Tree in the Forest is safe, … but …
It’s a very general report.
Which is full of info , … but not to capacity??
No I’m actually not. I like to read both the financial and annual reports carefully. Personally I think it’s important, especially this year as members are being asked to vote on a change to the constitution.
So when something in a season either perplexes or annoys me I also look closely at the EOYRs to look for answers… especially when things are spun a certain way
I suspect the sponge is not sourced from rubber trees. It’s not cork, for sure.
Ok I take your point. However to get a full picture you need to understand what has really changed. Hence I highlighted the key staff expense. Comparing only one year to the next can be deceiving.
We covered losing $3m in donations in a canter, yet the net revenue drop you worry about was down about $70K. Others’ comments re staff payouts are plausible for the admin expenses, though I concede those costs deserve attention. That number you can smell is Chanel no 5.
So, the club is spinning us a con by talking its financial position up when really, that is NOT how it is? A fib is a fib is a lie. Culture???
Smells like, looks like there’s a tad of 2012 about it.