2022 ANNUAL REPORT

33 TREASURER’S REPORT The accompanying chart (fig.1) highlights the main sources of this income. It should be noted that figures such as retail, catering and hospitality are shown within their own lines, and are recorded sepa- rately to match receipts. The overall pre-tax surplus generated for the year is reported as £869,661, and this is shown within the full set of accounts on the subsequent pages of this report. Although there were some positive and negative move- ments in comparison to our budget for the year, the end result was closely aligned to our forecasts. This surplus ranks highly in our list of historical returns (fig.2) . Indeed, with the exception of the 2015 Ashes year and the unique post-Covid year of 2021, the results derived from the last 12 months are very close to being our best ever. This continued generation of surpluses has ensured the club continues to meet all of its debt repayments, minimising any interest charges accrued by repaying certain debts before they become interest bearing. For instance, a £2m loan agreement with the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) was repaid in full during this financial year, before any interest became chargeable, after the initially interest-free terms of the loan were considered to be a useful option amidst the uncertainty of late 2020. We also continued to reduce our debt held in loans with our local authorities, with that figure now standing at £5.7m. By way of reference, this is the same level of debt position that we had in 2010 and is £2.6m below our peak of £8.3m in 2018. Despite the sound financial returns outlined above, our finances this year were negatively impacted by two main variables related to the scheduling of games. When the fixture dates for 2022 were released (post budget approval) we knew that a Friday start to our Test Match would pose a challenge in relation to both our hospitality budget and our day four sales.The resulting net impact was approxi- mated to be £235k. Our compressedVitality Blast fixture list, meanwhile, included three home matches in the space of five days in late May, one of which was moved due to the logistical complexities which arose from Nottingham Forest’s progression to the Play-Off Final.With a similarly congested run of games once our early-June Test Match had con- cluded, we experienced a negative impact of £246k compared to our forecast for the tournament as a whole (when taking into account ticketing, hospitality, retail and catering). With a combined shortfall against budget income of £481k from the above points, some positive movements were required to help compensate and drive a surplus back towards our original ambitions.The positive contribution duly arrived from a number of sources, including a larger-than-forecast number of membership subscriptions, a strong catering and retail return on day five of ourTest Match and another successful staging of The Hundred competition in which all lines per- formed to a significantly better level than in 2021. Cost pressures have continued to bite in 2022, and these will be carried with us as we move into 2023.Two simple examples of this can be found within our electricity prices and the rising cost of National Minimum Wage.We came out of our electricity contract in October 2021 and agreed a new fixed two-year deal, but this still effectively doubled our costs and led to an increase this year of approximately £250k. Minimum wage, meanwhile, rose in April 2022 (by 7%) and will increase again in April 2023 (by 10%), leading to an increased cost for our casual staffing positions (e.g. matchday) of 17% compared to only two years ago. We now move ahead into a new financial year in which we will not host a Men’sTest Match.Therefore, we do expect to report a significant deficit in next year’s accounts – just as we did in 2016, when we last experienced a ‘normal’ (non-World Cup, non-Covid) year without Men’sTest cricket. As ever, our approach will be to consider this as part of a multi-year cycle, in which the aim is to make the most of our most successful seasons in order to withstand our leaner summers. As we prepare to host an historicWomen’s Ashes Test, two fixtures for England’s male world champions and a full domestic calendar, we do so in the knowledge that the next 12 months are sure to provide their share of challenges off the field. FINANCIAL YEAR PRE-TAX SURPLUS (£) 2021 £1.91m 2015 £1.18m 2018 £0.91m 2022 £0.87m 2011 £0.58m (fig.2)