Everton announce losses of almost £140million in ‘very challenging year’

Xenia Sports – London

Everton has announced record losses of almost £140million after the implications of the coronavirus pandemic significantly impacted revenues.

The club’s deficit after tax was £139.9m, considerably worse than a year ago when they posted a then-record loss of £111.8m, albeit over a 13-month accounting period.

Everton said the cost of Covid-19 amounted to an unforeseen loss of £67.3m.

To help offset the losses majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri pumped in £50m of his own cash during the last financial year up to June 2020 and has already put in a further £50m for the current period.

That took his investment in the club since assuming control in February 2016 to £400m, with plans for a further £100m to be injected.

As a result the club have taken steps to create and propose a new share issue to Moshiri’s Blue Heaven Holdings Limited up to a value of £250m, with the conversion of previous shareholder loans into equity equating to £150m of that total.

That would potentially take his share in the club from 77.2 per cent to 93.3 per cent.

Everton chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale said: “Clearly this has been a very challenging year, not least from a financial perspective with the impact of Covid-19 having a profound, wide-reaching and material impact on our figures.

“Prior to the pandemic, we were forecasting record revenues in excess of £200m. Our final accounts show that a significant proportion of our losses have been directly attributable to the pandemic.”