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Ipswich Witches 2026


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57 minutes ago, RoundTheBoards said:

Has anyone closer to Ipswich got any information on the sale of the club and the prospect of Ipswich being able to come to the tapes in 2026?


All I'm hearing is that there's still the same consortium (which involves at least one sponsor - but not Guy Nicholls) that is interested in buying it, with an offer they put in a while back, but Chris Louis is still pondering the next move.    Is he putting an unrealistic value on the club because he doesn't want to quit?    Companies House values the club balance sheet at £3,417, but rumour has it that Louis is asking for about 60 times this amount!   

 

 

 

based on your summary of value Sheffield will be paying people to buy the club!!!

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8 hours ago, RoundTheBoards said:

Has anyone closer to Ipswich got any information on the sale of the club and the prospect of Ipswich being able to come to the tapes in 2026?


All I'm hearing is that there's still the same consortium (which involves at least one sponsor - but not Guy Nicholls) that is interested in buying it, with an offer they put in a while back, but Chris Louis is still pondering the next move.    Is he putting an unrealistic value on the club because he doesn't want to quit?    Companies House values the club balance sheet at £3,417, but rumour has it that Louis is asking for about 60 times this amount!   

 

 

 

More to the point, will they have any riders ? 

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11 hours ago, RoundTheBoards said:

 Chris Louis is still pondering the next move.    Is he putting an unrealistic value on the club because he doesn't want to quit?    Companies House values the club balance sheet at £3,417, but rumour has it that Louis is asking for about 60 times this amount!   

When selling/buying a business as a going concern the balance sheet, although interesting is not the prime consideration. “Operating profit” is the figure used to value a business i.e the profit made before accounting for interest and tax. In some instances depreciation is also excluded. 
Depending on the likely growth prospects a multiplier of between 4x (poor) & 8x (good) of the operating profit would be used to value the business. 
Using your calculation, it would appear Louis is asking £200k for his business so using a moderate 6x multiplier it would indicate an annual profit (before tax & interest) of £33k. This would yield a gross return of 16.6% on the £200k investment which appears about right considering the state of UK speedway and the risk of investing in a volatile industry. 

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I'd imagine much will depend on what security of tenure the Witches have at Foxhall and how any buyer perceives the future of speedway

The fact that Ipswich may be able to show historical figures that are positive doesn't mean the future ones will be

I certainly wouldn't be punting 200k at this time or indeed anything substantial 

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10 minutes ago, hammer1969 said:

 

Link to Jason Doyle interview with BBC Suffolk

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/motorsport/articles/ce86gxg9wldo

"If someone had bought the club who I'd want to work with, then I'd probably have said no to riding in Sweden but it hasn't come about - there's no buyers at the moment."

That's a killer sentence!

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2 hours ago, YeOldPitGate said:

As we have said before what are you buying other than the equipment and the air fence which can't be more than 10-20k .

The owners would not be selling only  “fixed assets” but selling a “going concern” to include the assets and “good will” being an intangible value representing its brand, loyal customers, reputation and license to trade in speedway. 
Of course if no buyer can be found and the business closes then the “assets” are all that remains to be sold off in order to meet money owed to creditors. 

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