No business reveals exactly where it spends every penny so you'll never get the precision you want but what we can see in rounded numbers:
Revenue £80m
People Costs £(55)m
Wages, salaries, bonuses of players and staff; 0 to directors as that has to be disclosed
Agent/transfer related fees £(4)m
Again, this gets reported via various newspapers; this sits in other operating costs
Finch Farm lease/Goodison rates/other direct facility/stadium running costs £(8)m
Again, based on numbers that have been disclosed in the past; will reduce slightly with the new deal with LCC includes heat, light, power, water, "routine" internal/pitch maintenance etc. All in other operating costs
Other costs £(10)m
Includes matchday costs for stewards/police, team and officials travel, all the normal costs of - which is costing £2m - running any business (equipment leases, car leases, general administrative costs, employee on-costs etc. etc.), one-offs like new pitch and ground repair/renovation and all the other "stuff" that Elstone name-checked at the AGM.
Financing costs £(4)m
Interest costs on debt split roughly 50:50 between the long-term mortgage deal we did (emergency need at the time but a bit of an expensive millstone now), the 'permanent' overdraft and the annual 'cash flow' loan to get us through the non-revenue generating summer months (Vibrac at the moment as the provider)
In a perfect world there would and should be disclosure of any personal interest the directors have in any offshore funding (does Earl have a direct interest in Vibrac?) and any personal security/debt they have secured against their own shareholding (are BK/Earl in hock to Green?) but under the current rules they are not required to disclose this detail and nobody else does it.
Could we know more? Yes.
Is Elstone's assertion that he/EFC have disclosed more to us than any other PL club fair? Yes.
Does this mean we are well run or that I trust Elstone to deliver the best performance and deals for the club? Yes and No.
I trust him to be honest. He is a Deloitte trained chartered accountant like me and has to comply with the same stringent ethical standards I do and I have no reason to believe he is any less respectful or diligent about that than me but I don't know him (he trained in Manchester 5-10 years after I trained in London and left to enter the real world!).
I trust Elstone to manage costs/risk.
I have no faith in Elstone as a commercial CEO, brand-builder and revenue generater.
As for Bill, he's a showman who has a different conception of "truth" than me. I believe in facts. Apparently he believes in "emotional truth" or some such guff. He'll bend the truth beyond recognition to tell the story he wants. He's not in the detail and has only a big picture grasp of our Finances. He's not delivered revenue growth, investment, a clear strategy or any deliverable plan to address any of the 3 key areas I flagged earlier. He's basically unable to move hos forward. None of that makes him a crook, just a problem.
Apologies to everyone else for the length but as a businessman and a trained Finance professional I get tired of the same misplaced questions being asked over and over again because they mean the questions we should be focused on can go unasked/unanswered and the fanbase gets divided between those who think:
1. Bill is bent and robbing us blind
2. Bill is part of the problem because he is out of his depth and using his showman skills and spin to bluff through
3. Bill is a Blue and the best owner we could have despite not having £
The first of those is just a blind alley that pushes more people into camp 3 as an emotional reaction, meaning they don't engage when people try to show them camp 2 is the reality. If the anti-Bill camp keeps banging the first drum change will never happen.
Rant over!!
