Major League Soccer Cup was getting into the second leg of Conference Semifinal weekend. As a super soccer fan, especially of our home team Seattle Sounders, I had planned to watch every match to be televised on two TV sports channels on this super soccer Sunday.
It's also in the soccer season of English Premier League, so I started the day with one of the PL matches: Manchester United visiting Swansea, as appetizer.
I had shared numerous times that I started playing soccer at five years old in Beijing and could have become a successful professional player if I had kept formal training in my childhood. However, I did watch thousands soccer matches either at the fields or on TV while growing up from a kid to a youngster. During those years from late 1970s to early 1990s, in my opinion, the most successful European League was Italian Serie A, mainly because Italian National Team surprisingly won the World Cup in 1982, which created soccer mania on Apennine Peninsula. Though I didn't know the detail information then, can imagine that huge investments flew into every Serie A club, so almost all super stars all over the world rushed to Italy. As a result of it, I followed Serie A the most and was amazed by those super stars' performances. However, English soccer influenced the world in those years significantly as well because England was always considered the origin of modern soccer. Manchester United was one of the English clubs I liked then. Mark Hughes was probably my most favorable Manchester United player in 1980s.
Getting into 21st Century, I didn't follow world soccer much in the first decade because there were very few matches broadcast on TV while I was living in United States. After being able to watch more live matches on TV in recent years, I figured that English Premier League might be the most influential in the world in this new era. Manchester United had been leading the league for quite a long time, so I started following it again. As we all learn that this club has been in trouble since Ferguson retired. The management seems never able to rebuild a productive elite squad though I assume they have spent a lot of money to purchase super stars in the last several years.
At the beginning of this season, they brought Championship expert, Jose Mourinho, back to England. I always evaluate him a quick fix for an underperformed elite club. It's a surprise to me that he hasn't showed the talent at Manchester United. Just like his predecessors, he also imported super stars such as Ibrahimovic and Pogba. I started paying attention to Ibra while he was playing for AC Milan several years ago. Two reasons drove me to put him as my most favorite in this decade: one was his play style being similar to Gullit who was my last most favorite in 1990s; another was that he was captain of Swedish National Team that I really admired in early 90s, especially during Euro Cup92, which was held in Sweden. Ibra had been scoring in every match at the beginning of this season but struggled recently. At age of 35, he is no longer powerful and accurate. Pogba wasn't very stable but improved. His performance in the last several matches was widely recognized.
Watching today's match, I was impressed by Pogba's first goal so much. It was a bullet shot into keeper's upper left corner. This goal led Manchester United to retain the power in this league. Ibra scored the following two goals to have his confidence rebuilt a little bit. More importantly, I was pleasant to see the big stars of this team cheering the goals together: Ibra, Rooney, Mata, Fellaini and Pogba. Manchester United owns such an invincible attacking troop, they should be a contender of Premier League Championship. Of course, I know they are still evaluating the players and will trade some of them during the window in winter, so you never know who is going to stay and who isn't.
While watching the match, I suddenly recalled that Manchester United was public traded in NYSE, so pulled the related information online to do a little bit research on it.
Glancing its financial statement, I could tell:
- Revenue increased year over year from 320M to 515M in the last 5 years;
- Net Income increased from 23M to 36M during the same period of time;
- Current Assets more than doubled due to the increase of Cash & Accounts Receivable, almost no inventories;
- PP&E kept at the same level without much additions;
- Intangibles doubled from 112M to 244M, probably referred to copyrights and players' contracts;
- Long Terms debt increased from 422M to 490M, pretty high;
- Cash Flow from Operations increased from 31M to 186M
Without in-depth analysis, I only can summarize that its business is booming and generating huge positive cash flow. Expenses may be a little bit high. Debts level isn't optimal because equity financing may not be efficient. Reasonableness of Intangibles need to be retested.
However, I decide to initiate coverage of its Stock with the symbol of MANU traded in NYSE . Its current price is at the level of $15. After its quarterly earning is released on 11/10, I will publish my rating.
Sports industry is huge, I would like to see more clubs to go public, which will have their operations well financed and offer more opportunities to the investors who are also sports' fans like me.
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