Financial director Clive Gowing believes Cheltenham Town could well be the most sustainable football club in the world after they posted a profit of more than £400,000 for the year ending May 31, 2022.
Helped by the sale of club captain Ben Tozer to Wrexham and young defender Will Armitage to Southampton, the Robins have built on last year’s figure of £10,000 in the black.
“It’s a very positive set of accounts and the second year running we’ve made a profit, which is a fantastic achievement,” Gowing said.
“I joke that we are probably one of the world’s most sustainable football clubs, financially speaking.”
Strong foundations enabled the club to secure the purchase of their training ground last summer, which cost a total of £1.2m.
“It wasn’t all on finance because we managed to do some of it through share investment, along with a smallish bank loan and funding it ourselves as well,” Gowing said.
“It’s only been possible due to financial prudence, not just last year but over a number of years and it’s a massive asset for the football club moving forward.”
The training ground loan repayments are marginally higher than the previous rent and Gowing says it has not caused shortfalls in other areas.
“The loan we have is minimal in terms of the asset size,” he said.
“Micky Moore (director of football) asked at the time how the loan would affect our day-to-day running and it doesn’t really.
“We had great landlords, but we only ever had a short-term lease and we couldn’t develop the site.
“To now own the asset and not have a big loan allows day-to-day trading to continue and we can now look at what we do next in terms of investment in the training ground or at the Completely-Suzuki Stadium.”
Cheltenham’s solid base has also allowed additional forward football planning, with next season’s budget already being discussed.
“Micky talks a lot about the football staff planning ahead in terms of transfer windows, but that’s only possible if we are in a strong financial position ourselves,” Gowing said.
“We can plan ahead for the summer and next season as well. In years gone past, we have been hand to mouth as a football club.
“Being on a sound financial footing allows us to not necessarily rely on the here and now, but to look into the future, which is helping with the success we have seen across the club.”
The club recorded a healthy bank balance at the end of the 2021/22 financial year, mainly because of the cash built up ahead of the summer training ground purchase.
“We had a cash reserve for that, but even now we still sit in a strong position from a cash perspective,” Gowing said.
“Having a profit for last year is great, but cash is key. We didn’t get all the transfer fees up front and some of it is spread over a period of time, but we are still in a strong position.”
The profitable year undoubtedly facilitated the record signing of Aidan Keena in January, along with the arrival of Will Goodwin, plus loan additions Elkan Baggott and Glen Rea.
But eight members of the squad are now out on loan, helping to balance the books.
Gowing is confident the club have learned from their previous spell in League One between 2006 and 2009, when they teetered on the edge of administration after an unsuccessful bid to extend their stay in the third tier.
“The risk is that you go chasing it and previously we have got ourselves into trouble, so we have to do things differently,” he said.
“We’ve had great success over the last 25 years and what our predecessors have achieved in that time has been remarkable, but if we don’t start doing things differently, we are going to get the same results, which is a year or two in League One and then going back to being a bottom half League Two club.
“We might then have the odd good year, but we’ll usually be around that bottom half of League Two and some might say that’s the size we are, but we want to build and do something different.
“We know financially we can’t compete with the teams around us, so what can we do differently? If we can plan ahead, it’s an advantage over other people.
“When you don’t have strong cashflow you can’t push the boat out too much, but when you have that cushion you can stretch it a little bit.”
Head coach Wade Elliott's Cheltenham play Accrington Stanley on Saturday in what is another ‘kids for a quid’ game as the club continue to grow their fanbase of the future.
