The sleeping giant of British horseracing, Newbury, is back in the saddle, returning to profit and reporting that numbers attending its marquee day, the Hennessy Gold Cup, are at their highest levels since the mid-1990s.
Newbury Racecourse, quoted on the ISDX exchange and a company which for many years was locked in a struggle with the activist investor Guinness Peat, has turned round a loss of more than £1.5 million in 2014 to produce a profit of £1.6 million last year. Revenues in the year jumped nearly £2 million to £14.3 million.
The stronger finances come as the company begins to reap the reward of its longterm investment in property development around the Berkshire course and bigger crowds.
Newbury has stayed at the back of the pack while some courses have reaped the benefit of increasing interest in the big racing festivals of the year: Cheltenham and Aintree in the spring, and Epsom for the Derby, Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood in high summer.
The Hennessy meeting at the end of November is one of the great events of winter jump racing. But it has taken 21 years to rebuild audiences for the Hennessy — the biggest long-distance handicap steeplechase after the Grand National — to where they were, with more than 18,000 turning up last November. Yet the 30,000 that attended the three-day Hennessy festival is less than half the number that Cheltenham and Aintree attract in one day of their festival meetings.
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“There have been significant improvements in the trading performance across a number of areas of the business, with racing activities growing 15 per cent and conference and event revenues growing 31 per cent,” said Dominic Burke, Newbury’s chairman. A racehorse breeder, he is also chief executive of JLT, the insurance group.
The revival has coincided with the arrival as chief executive of Julian Thick, formerly the managing director at Aintree. His plans to raise the course’s profile on the flat have brought in Al Shaqab, Qataris who are behind the course’s richest ever day’s racing on Saturday week with its sponsorship of the Lockinge meeting.