Blues CEO Mark Ashton says he and manager Kieran McKenna have been talking about their plans for the January transfer window for the last three or four months, while chairman Mike O’Leary was asked about the owners’ intentions should the club win promotion to the Premier League.
Town are currently second in the Championship, seven points ahead of Leeds United in third, a remarkable start to the campaign having put them firmly in the running for a return to the top flight after 22 years.
At last night’s PLC AGM in the Sir Bobby Robson Suite, Ashton and O’Leary were joined by chief financial officer Tom Ball to answer questions from shareholders.
The CEO was asked whether, if the Blues were still in a position similar to their current one whether the owners would provide McKenna with a transfer kitty to strengthen the squad during the upcoming transfer window.
"January’s just another month in the calendar,” Ashton responded. "In the summer we plan for January and we have to plan for January in the summer because we have this thing called Financial Fair Play, Profit and Sustainability rules.
"And this is why the revenue that we take in from supporters from ticketing, retail, hospitality, sponsorship is so, so important.
"The more we bring into the football club, the higher the ability for the owners to put money to spend on the pitch. That’s simply the way it works.
"We plan for January, so there are no shocks or surprises. Kieran and myself have been talking about January for the last three or four months.
"Ultimately, your plans can change. Why? Two players could get injured in the last week of December and you have to be ready for it, so we’ll work within the Financial Fair Play rules, you would expect us to do that and we’ll be steady, competitive and active in that window.”
A shareholder asked chairman O’Leary whether promotion to the Premier League would be the signal for the club’s owners to sell up.
Gamechanger 20 Ltd now holds a stake of more than 98 per cent of the club - the PLC’s share is down to less the two per cent following share issues over the last couple of years - with more than 90 per cent of Gamechanger owned by PSPRS, the pension fund for Arizona’s fire and police services.
"I think it’s fair to say that our owners have got foresight that very few others had,” O’Leary said. "They recognised the opportunity from British football and chose to invest in it and they were pretty much the first institutional investor in British football that we’ve seen.
"And that’s on the back of what they perceive to be a key opportunity thanks to the media revenues, [such as] the new [Sky Sports] media deal which has just been announced in the Premier League. And the valuation of the clubs that benefit from those media revenues are huge.
"Clearly our owners are very keen to take part in that and see the valuation of their investment climb, which they will do provided we continue to grow and build our club sustainably and we’re as successful as the team has managed to achieve so far.
"Of course there will come a time when they will want to take some return on it, but I’m not sure they’ll ever want to completely sell up.
"They may, but in so doing I think we’d be part of making sure we had something to follow on from that that would allow us to continue the journey.
"Equally, it’s possible that if we’ve increased the valuation of the club, they may choose to sell some shares to someone else but retain the majority and therefore take a chunk of their money out but stay with us.
"There are a lot of ifs, buts and maybes about how that might happen. But I certainly don’t see a short-term change any time soon, which would interrupt the plan that we’ve had in place with them all along.
"We put in place a five-to-10-year programme which is still enabling Mark to build a team and take the stadium forward and also take the facilities in general forward. And that’s before we do anything property-wise.
"There are lots of interesting opportunities available to us and I think our backers are both very pleased with what’s happened and they’re enjoying the ride as much as the rest of us.”
In the evening’s PLC business, Roger Finbow was re-elected as chair and Richard Moore as a director.