Saints Stock Market Announcement Thursday, 24th Jul 2008 11:24 Saints have made a stock market announcement. Trading Update Im sure that this will cause a flurry of message board indignant posts across the internet, but the truth of the matter is that this statement conveys nothing new in the facts, but does enable the Club to get a few points across. The first reason why they have put it out now, instead of in three months time is purely to get the bad news out of the way now, rather than announce it in mid season when it could have a detrimental effect on both the team and the supporters. In truth its doing nothing more than clarify what the fans have known for the last six months, that the club is trading at a monthly loss of around £850k, but it should be noted that these figures are up to 3oth June, so they would include the wages of the players out of contract and now released, a sizeable chunk of that £850k a month as poined out in a previous article on TUI last week, perhaps as much as a third of that monthly loss. Secondly its making the point that Lowe and the new regime are acknowledging the financial situation and that Crouch and the previous board did not and more than that had done nothing to alleviate the loss in the second half of the season. Thirdly its pointing out that Lowe is doing something about it, he is talking to the Bank and loan note holder(basically the stadium loan) and taking positive steps. The fourth and final point is that the Club remain buoyant and hopeful for the new season under a new structure, again this is standard PR spin for any company making stock market announcements. The real fact of the matter though is that this is going to be a hard enough season as it is, lets get the bad news out of the way now, the club do not need this being announced in November if they are going through a hard time on the pitch, it could be potentially damaging to on field results and if the team are doing badly could spark panic in investors, by releasing this information now we have got all the bad news out of the way now, in theory things cant get worse, at least from a corporate point of view. The message is clear and simple, whether you choose to believe it or not is another matter. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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