Jon
Admin 
Posts: 6,840
|
Post by Jon on Mar 15, 2021 0:47:00 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by plainmoorpete on Mar 15, 2021 18:26:54 GMT
In short does that mean the club has managed to add a further £900,000 to the debit column?
|
|
Jon
Admin
Posts: 6,840
|
Post by Jon on Mar 15, 2021 23:36:43 GMT
In short does that mean the club has managed to add a further £900,000 to the debit column? Yes. £905k in 12 months to 31/3/20. We already knew the figure at 30/6/19, so another £780k in the nine months to 31/3/20. So spending c.£1m a year above what we could afford before Covid. Let's enjoy it while it lasts. |
|
|
|
Post by register on Mar 17, 2021 10:46:33 GMT
I am going to add a post to this thread a little later, still bloody painting.
The post will contain my views on this topic, which are invariably different to others. So that’s all they are, my views/opinions on this topic.
My views won’t start WW3...(sniff)...or stop us from falling even further down the league. So all the prepubescent schoolgirl angst that tends to follow one of my posts is not really required!
Peace! 🤘
|
|
|
|
Post by nigelecfc on Mar 17, 2021 14:06:02 GMT
Hope you don't mind a City fan taking an interest in this, but I have tried to keep an eye on the off-field situation at Plainmoor from time to time. There's a thread over on the Exeweb forum that I've just contributed to today. Not sure if I've got the gist of what is happening in the Riviera Stadium/Gaming International/Toklon world. www.exeweb.com/forums/threads/the-serious-torquay-thread.56048/page-128 |
|
|
|
Post by register on Mar 17, 2021 14:08:33 GMT
As has been mentioned before, my knowledge of football is nil...and here’s me not believing in a God.
A figure of £900.000 has been pumped into the club over the past year by the owner=
I believe (no knowledge of football) that teams in the league above, receive around £900.000 a year=
So what does that add up to= it adds up to a very very very pissed off owner!
One would have cancelled out tother, but instead of that happening we decided to go for a competition with the winner of the final receiving the monetary equivalent of a soggy bag of cheese and onion crisps!
To say that this was a monumental cockup is being conservative, it actually makes Hitler’s idea of attacking the Russians in the middle of winter seem like a very good idea!
In my opinion we would have won this league at a canter if we had steered clear of all other competitions. We know that Garry is not infallible, last night proves that. We were a dozen points clear and cruising when we entered the competition, from then on we went down faster than Monica on thanksgiving! Sorry Garry, but you fuc**d up!
So where does that leave us...on a knife edge I would say. If we had won this league, I believe the owner would have hung around for a while longer, but as it is...it’s time to reap the whirlwind! 🌪
What time do school girls get out of class? 🍩🍩
|
|
|
|
Post by stefano on Mar 17, 2021 14:33:43 GMT
Good balanced post there nigelecfc on the Exeweb forum.
Not sure that any of us have got the answers but we have been pondering the same sort of issues on various threads over the 3 fans forums for almost 5 years now.
I am not optimistic of a good outcome myself.
We have an excellent poster on here Jon who has a tremendous knowledge of and background in company accounting, so I am sure he will be able to provide some interesting observations on your points.
Thanks for sharing and best of luck in getting promoted but as I live in Ivybridge it has to be on the condition that you change places with Argyle! 😉⚽️
|
|
|
|
Post by nigelecfc on Mar 17, 2021 17:04:54 GMT
Good balanced post there nigelecfc on the Exeweb forum. Not sure that any of us have got the answers but we have been pondering the same sort of issues on various threads over the 3 fans forums for almost 5 years now. I am not optimistic of a good outcome myself. We have an excellent poster on here Jon who has a tremendous knowledge of and background in company accounting, so I am sure he will be able to provide some interesting observations on your points. Thanks for sharing and best of luck in getting promoted but as I live in Ivybridge it has to be on the condition that you change places with Argyle! 😉⚽️ Thanks for that Stefano. I think you'll see from the tone of most of that thread, that most City fans want to see Torquay back in the League. Also, with this kind of thing, I try to stay measured and stick to the facts available in the public domain, just to make sure I'm not creating problems for myself, or the admin of these forums... It was interesting to see that Gaming International ceased being a "person of significant control" of Riviera Stadium Limited in November 2017. Not knowing much about company structures, I'd be curious to know what the intent would be behind that move. These things are not done without a reason. I did have a quick look at the accounts for Torquay United AFC Ltd. The most recent accounts just say that Riviera is in sole control of Clarke Osborne, whereas the accounts the year before referenced Toklon as the ultimate parent company. You have to draw the conclusion that a decision has been taken to create a bit of accounting distance between TUFC and the business of the Toklon group. One other thing that caught my attention from the TUFC accounts is that the company has quite sizeable tangible fixed assets of £2.4M after depreciation - £1.5M of which is "plant and machinery", which had a rate of depreciation of 15%. I compared this to the similar items in the accounts for Exeter City and their fixed assets of £1.6M after depreciation included a figure of just £7K for plant and machinery with a rate of depreciation of 33%. It could of course be that this is not a like-for-like comparison, but the valuation will be important to anyone trying to discern the extent to which the debts of TUFC are/aren't covered by tangible assets. Anyhow, will continue to keep an eye on this and see what happens when Toklon et al eventually file their accounts. |
|
Rob
TFF member
Posts: 3,578
Favourite Player: Asa Hall
|
Post by Rob on Mar 17, 2021 18:36:26 GMT
Good balanced post there nigelecfc on the Exeweb forum. Not sure that any of us have got the answers but we have been pondering the same sort of issues on various threads over the 3 fans forums for almost 5 years now. I am not optimistic of a good outcome myself. We have an excellent poster on here Jon who has a tremendous knowledge of and background in company accounting, so I am sure he will be able to provide some interesting observations on your points. I’d echo that and thanks for the link to Exeweb, Nigel. I used to go and watch Speedway at Reading, residing nearby as I do, which another Toklon subsidiary with Clarke Osborne as Director had control of for a short period. They lost their home while much development occurred around the stadium and have never returned to the town. When I heard Clarke Osborne was involved in taking over at Torquay I was naturally concerned for my Club’s long term existence. My position regarding that concern has not changed having experienced it once and seeing what Swindon Speedway have gone through. They have announced that they are not competing in the 2021 Premiership of that sport. I went there during the last season in 2019. The housing is pretty much up to the perimeter of the noisy ‘pits’ now. |
|
Jon
Admin
Posts: 6,840
|
Post by Jon on Mar 17, 2021 23:47:22 GMT
Hope you don't mind a City fan taking an interest in this, but I have tried to keep an eye on the off-field situation at Plainmoor from time to time. There's a thread over on the Exeweb forum that I've just contributed to today. Not sure if I've got the gist of what is happening in the Riviera Stadium/Gaming International/Toklon world. www.exeweb.com/forums/threads/the-serious-torquay-thread.56048/page-128Nigel, Always good to have intelligent and measured input from a fellow football fan. There will always be rivalry and banter between supporters of different clubs but we all know how much our clubs mean to us and the vast majority of fans are on the same side in wanting to protect the continued existence of all clubs. I have been fully behind Exeter, Newport, Aldershot, Hereford, Chester, Halifax, Bury, Macclesfield etc. etc. when they have been threatened with extinction. Strange situation at Torquay as we have a very well-funded operation at present. That is as far as most people will want to dig and who can blame them? Most fans are happy when their team is top of the league and angry when their team is bottom of the league. Simple as that. Rest assured there are plenty of people with an eye on the long game. Don't take the lack of constant forum chatter as a lack of interest or concern. Those of us who fret over who owns the Plainmoor freehold get a load of abuse from a couple of posters on here, but most on here fully understand the risks. Amongst the most supportive of organisations has been Exeter City Supporters' Trust who take a continued interest in TUFC and have offered to help in any way they can if and when that becomes necessary. Let's all cross our fingers and hope it won't be necessary. I hope you don't mind but I have cut and pasted your Exeweb posting below. Let me know if you do mind and I will delete. I would encourage people to click the Exeweb link anyway to see the responses. If I can remember my Exeweb password, I might even add one myself. Nigel's Exeweb post in full: While all the attention has been drawn to Torquay's ups and down on the pitch, I haven't seen much about the off pitch situation, so thought I'd take a quick look.
The majority shareholder of the club is Riviera Stadium Limited, a company with two directors, the main one being a guy called Clarke Osborne. The main, and seemingly only, business of the company appears to be owning Torquay United - with the football club being a subsidiary of Riviera Stadium Ltd. Riviera Stadium's accounts were posted on Companies House last week and stated:
"Included in debtors is an amount of £3,039,000 (2019: £2,134,000) which is due from the Torquay United Association Football Club Limited, the company's subsidiary company, and is unsecured."
So the football club racked up further debt to the tune of another £900,000 in the 12 months to the end of March 2020. A period when at least income was coming through the turnstiles for nearly all the year. So, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine the debt is likely to be well over £4million by now.
In many ways, the debt doesn't really matter while the owners are prepared to funnel money into the club from their other operations. And Riviera Stadium Limited have recently added a second director, who appears to be a Thai national, so there may be more funds there.
The companies that Clarke Osborne is also associated with mainly appear to be in the business of operating greyhound/speedway tracks, and property development. In some cases developing the stadiums and/or land adjacent to the dog tracks they've been operating. (There's an ongoing saga at Swindon in relation to that speedway track and housing surrounding it). That said, there are a few other new-ish companies Mr Osborne has registered an involvement in but are too new to file accounts, so who knows, perhaps there is a ready supply of cash to burn from them.
I would check the latest accounts of the other more established dog track/property companies still operating that Clarke Osborne is involved with, and that also share a Swindon registered office address with Torquay United AFC Ltd - these being Gaming International, Poole Stadium Limited, Toklon Limited, BS Estates Limited.
But all four have one thing in common - as at today the accounts are all overdue by two and a half months and counting. Of course, this may be nothing for Gulls fans to be concerned about, but in their last filed accounts this group of companies contained the following statement:
"We draw attention to note 2.3 in the financial statements, which indicates that the Group's banker has shown a reluctance to commit to support for the whole of the forthcoming year. The directors have therefore held discussions with a third party who is supportive of the Group's plans having entered into a loan agreement, with repayment thereof being reliant on the sale of the development stock, but there is uncertainty over when the funding will become available and whether this would occur prior to cancellation of the current facility with the bank on 29 February 2020".
The accounts of Toklon - the parent company of the group - also said: "The Group's principal project is the redevelopment of the Swindon stadium site. This includes the building of a new greyhound and speedway stadium which is expected to be completed by September 2020".
Since then there appear to be have been further delays at the Swindon development site. |
|
Jon
Admin
Posts: 6,840
|
Post by Jon on Mar 18, 2021 0:38:06 GMT
It was interesting to see that Gaming International ceased being a "person of significant control" of Riviera Stadium Limited in November 2017. Not knowing much about company structures, I'd be curious to know what the intent would be behind that move. These things are not done without a reason. I did have a quick look at the accounts for Torquay United AFC Ltd. The most recent accounts just say that Riviera is in sole control of Clarke Osborne, whereas the accounts the year before referenced Toklon as the ultimate parent company. You have to draw the conclusion that a decision has been taken to create a bit of accounting distance between TUFC and the business of the Toklon group. When Riviera Stadium Ltd was first set up, it was a fully-owned subsidiary of Gaming International Ltd, which was a fully-owned subsidiary of Toklon Ltd. That would normally mean that Torquay United's profit and loss account would have to be rolled up into the Group P&L for Toklon. Gaming International's 2016 accounts stated that RSL and TUFC were specifically excluded from consolidation as it was an investment held with a view to resale within one year - which appeared to conflict with talk of a 5-year-plan for TUFC. All became clear when Gaming International did indeed dispose of its investment - to Clarke Osborne personally. That move does remove some clarity as to where investment is coming from as intra- group loans are disclosed in the accounts, but other loans are not. So we know how much TUFC owes RSL and we know how much RSL owes in total - but we have no visibility as to who RSL owes money to. One other thing that caught my attention from the TUFC accounts is that the company has quite sizeable tangible fixed assets of £2.4M after depreciation - £1.5M of which is "plant and machinery", which had a rate of depreciation of 15%. I compared this to the similar items in the accounts for Exeter City and their fixed assets of £1.6M after depreciation included a figure of just £7K for plant and machinery with a rate of depreciation of 33%. It could of course be that this is not a like-for-like comparison, but the valuation will be important to anyone trying to discern the extent to which the debts of TUFC are/aren't covered by tangible assets. No mystery here but a mixture of classifications for redevelopment of stands. As well as rates for land and buildings and plant machinery, you will see a depreciation rate of 2% for Bristow's Bench. This is the new grandstand. It is included in plant and machinery. There is also a part-amortised grant hidden in long-term creditors which is amortised in line with the stand's life - effectively a negative depreciation. The fixed asset values are true and fair on a going concern basis, but Torbay Council owns the freehold. That means that the actual realisable value of the fixed assets without the freehold would be nothing like the balance sheet value if disposed of - for example in liquidation. For me, the fact that the debt is NOT covered by tangible assets is a very good thing - but I am not the creditor! Anyhow, will continue to keep an eye on this and see what happens when Toklon et al eventually file their accounts. Since Gaming International disposed of RSL, I have not kept a close eye on Toklon and GI and had missed the late filing. Late filing is never goood news and rings alarm bells. If they are distressed, that has not appeared to affect TUFC so far - although it does not necessarily mean that it won't. We come back to the question of where Riviera Stadium Ltd is borrowing from. Answers on a postcard.... |
|
|
|
Post by nigelecfc on Mar 18, 2021 16:43:20 GMT
Hi Jon,
That's fine, no problem with sharing that Exeweb post here, and thanks for clearing up those points above.
Also, you're right that football fans of other clubs are overwhelmingly supportive when other clubs face off-field difficulty, and can often provide vital information. When Exeter nearly went to the wall in the early 2000s due to the actions of Messrs Russell and Lewis, I remember on Exeweb we got a huge amount of insight into the duo's track record from an anonymous fan at Swansea who had experience of their activities.
The funny thing is that I've just been back to the Companies House website and it now (on 18th March) says that Gaming International's accounts will be available in 10 days. I expect the same will be true of the other Toklon companies in due course. From a balance sheet point of view, they're almost irrelevant as they will be describing ancient history (the year to December 2019). But I'll be interested to see the story they tell about the Swindon development, and what it says about the "third party" re-financing referred to in the previous accounts.
But whether this has any relevance to the financial support being received by Riviera Stadium is anyone's guess.
|
|
Jon
Admin
Posts: 6,840
|
Post by Jon on Mar 18, 2021 23:47:23 GMT
The funny thing is that I've just been back to the Companies House website and it now (on 18th March) says that Gaming International's accounts will be available in 10 days. Nice to see you have the power to influence these things.  |
|
Jon
Admin
Posts: 6,840
|
Post by Jon on Jul 8, 2021 7:47:53 GMT
In short does that mean the club has managed to add a further £900,000 to the debit column? Yes. £905k in 12 months to 31/3/20. We already knew the figure at 30/6/19, so another £780k in the nine months to 31/3/20. So spending c.£1m a year above what we could afford before Covid. Let's enjoy it while it lasts. Very surprisingly, the debt to RSL did not move at all in the three months from March 31 to June 30 - staying put at “only” £3,039,000. I suppose that only shows that not playing football is less costly than playing football - which we already knew. The loss for the year was less than I expected at “only” £811k. Where does Dave Thomas get his nonsense from? He says that Osborne’s investment appeared to have increased to more than £4 million by 30/6/20. No it doesn’t at all! The number is clearly stated as £3,039,000 at 30/6/20 in the accounts. Dave obviously understands nothing about finance but you would think he could find someone to ask rather than mislead readers. £4m + may have been mentioned as a guess of the “investment” as of today. I wonder if that is what is confusing him. I would struggle to even guess as 2020/21 was such a weird season financially. We took out a loan from the English Sports Council on April Fools’ Day, but no indication of how large or small. It is possible that RSL has covered operating losses in 2020/21 with this loan and left the “investment” frozen but it is possible that another £1m+ has been pumped in by RSL. |
|
rjdgull
TFF member
Admin
Posts: 11,801 
|
Post by rjdgull on Jul 15, 2021 7:39:53 GMT
link - Dave Thomas reporting on almost five million pumped into the club by the owner.
|
|
