14th Mar 2016 09:09
LONDON (Alliance News) - Goals Soccer Centres PLC on Monday said that it swung to a loss in 2015 and that Nick Basing has replaced Keith Edelman as executive chairman with immediate effect.
The owner of five-a-side football centres said it suffered a pretax loss of GBP6.2 million in 2015, having made a pretax profit of GBP6.8 million in 2014, as revenue fell to GBP33.0 million from GBP34.7 million. Gross margin slipped to 89% from 90% as a result of lower-margin bar and birthday party sales.
Operating expenses increased to GBP34.8 million from GBP19.8 million, largely due to GBP14.5 million in exceptional costs, up from GBP3.8 million the year before. The largest of these costs in 2015 was a GBP8.1 million impairment of underperforming soccer centres. Goals also took a GBP3.1 million impairment of its Pro5 Soccer acquisition and wrote off GBP2.5 million in development costs.
Group like-for-like sales declined by 6.3%, as 8.4% growth in the US failed to offset a 6.7% decrease in the UK. Goals said it has seen a return to "very modest, positive" like-for-like sales in the first nine weeks of 2016.
The company noted that it has been facing increased competition from new grant-aided full-size 3G pitches, but that it is implementing a review into the business to develop a new strategy in order to improve performance and returns.
Goals said it is not recommending a final dividend and will recommence payments "when appropriate".
Basing, who was appointed to the board in November, has replaced Edelman as executive chairman, while the search for a chief executive continues, Goals added.
Goals is currently under the leadership of Managing Director Keith Rogers, who co-founded the company. However, he now has been appointed as president of Goals US and is re-locating to Los Angeles, while Goals searches for a chief executive to manage the whole group.
Shares in Goals were trading down 8.7% at 106.39 pence on Monday morning.
By Karolina Kaminska; [email protected] @KarolinaAllNews
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