SHARES in Goals Soccer Centres dropped sharply after the 5-a-side football pitch operator said the adverse weather in March led to a £500,000 fall in sales in the first 18 weeks of the year.
East Kilbride-based Goals is the latest in a long line of businesses to lament the impact the extreme conditions brought by the Beast from the East, which hampered demand for football matches.
The company, which has 49 centres including three in California, said like-for-likes sales for the period dropped by 1.9 per cent, sending shares down nearly six per cent and wiping around £4 million from its stock market worth.
Stripping out the impact of the weather, Goals said like-for-like sales were up 2.3% compared with the first 18 weeks of 2017.
It flagged its continuing investment in upgrading its pitches, confirming that it would spend £3m to refurbish 90 playing surfaces at 18 clubs which have four or less upgraded arenas over the course of the summer. The investment is designed to reverse declining sales at clubhouses at older arenas, with Goals noting that 73% of its estate will have been upgraded by the time this summer’s programme is completed. The programme will reduce the average pitch age in those arenas to 3.2 years.
Goals reported in March that the performance of older sites of its older sites had weighed on its results for 2017. Its profits dipped 19% to £6.2m.
Last year the company formed a joint venture with City Football Group, owner of English Premier League Manchester City, which has invested $16 million to drive the roll-out of Goals across the Atlantic. The firm confirmed yesterday that it has started work in its fourth US club, at Covina in Los Angeles, earlier this week. That followed the opening of its third in LA, at Rancho Cucamonga, in January.
Goals said negotiations over further sites to develop continue and described the pipeline of opportunities as strong. It has previously stated that it hopes that seven centres will be up and running in the US by the end 2019, amid plans to open two new outlets per year across the Atlantic.
Analysts at broker Peel Hunt said in a note: “The key to the investment story is the sustainability of LFL (like for like) sales growth in the first invested sites; and, fortunately, LFL sales are remaining strong in the invested pitches.
“As a result, the company should now enter a three-year period of positive LFL sales, during which earnings should recover and gearing should halve. To reflect this, we are raising our target price to 100p.”
Chairman Michael Bolingbroke, a one-time chief executive of Inter Milan, said: “2017 was an important year for rebuilding and refocusing the company, following the strategy put in place in mid-2016.
“Our arena modernisation programme is well advanced with 53% of our estate now upgraded reducing our average pitch age from seven years before the upgrade works commenced to a current average age of 4.1 years and we continue to develop our business in the US.”
Goals is now led by Andy Anson, a former Manchester United and Walt Disney Company executive, who joined last month. He replaced Mark Jones, who is now chief executive of Carluccio’s.
Shares in Goals closed down 5.25p, or 5.92%, at 83.5p.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here