CELTIC yesterday unveiled financial figures that show the club to be ''very robust'' financially, 'very stable'', according to Peter Lawwell, the chief executive.
He added: ''We are not complacent, not over-confident. This year we have not won anything but if these figures as regarded as a snapshot of today then we are in decent shape.''
The club reduced its bank debt by £2m to £7m during the second half of last year, interim financial figures for the six months to December 31 show. Celtic made a pre-tax profit of about £180,000 while cutting the debt to just more than £7m. Turnover increased by 3.1% to £29.3m. Celtic reported investment in football personnel of almost £4.5m, half of the figure for the same period last year, when they profited from the sale of Aiden McGeady among others.
Chairman Ian Bankier said: "At this time last year, we reported a profit from player transfer activity of £13.2m. This year, the comparable figure is considerably less, at £3.15m. The key dynamic driving these interim results and our financial performance for the remainder of this financial year is our player investment and transfer strategy.
"We invested £4.44m in the first half of the year and have followed this with further acquisitions in the most recent January registration window. We can confidently say that the strength and depth of the player pool now available to the football manager is better than it has been for several seasons.''
Celtic's Europa League reprieve helped increase turnover by almost £1m after they were reinstated following the exclusion of Sion before bowing out in the group stages. "This increase offset reduced revenues from pre-season tours and merchandising," Bankier said.
Operating expenses rose in line with turnover while Bankier predicted a similar trading pattern in the first six months of this year. He added: "Our period-end bank debt of £7.05m is around £2m less than at the same time last year, and remains manageable, and well within the club's facilities."
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 hereComments are closed on this article