Good day ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Manchester United Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] We would like to remind you that this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Corinna Freedman, Head of Investor Relations for Manchester United.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Manchester United's fourth quarter 2019 earnings call. A corresponding press release containing our financial results was issued earlier this morning and can be accessed via our IR Web site. Today's call is being recorded and webcast and a replay will also be available on our site for 30 days thereafter. Before we begin and as a matter of formality, we would like to remind everyone that this conference call will include estimates and forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Any such estimates are forward-looking statements should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary note included with our earnings released regarding forward-looking statements as well as various other risk factor discussions in our prior filings with the SEC. I will now turn the conference call over to our Executive Vice Chairman, Edward Woodward for opening remarks.

Thank you, Corinna. Good morning and thank you to everyone for joining us today. Also with me on the call as usual are Richard Arnold, our Group Managing Director; Cliff Baty, our Chief Financial Officer; and Hemen Tseayo, our Head of Corporate Finance. Before Richard and Cliff take you through our commercial operations and our financial results, I'd like to say a few words about the club's overall direction. We and our growing global fan base demand success. Success means winning trophies. That target and that standard has never changed for Manchester United. The progress we've made on the business side that Richland and Cliff will shortly describe, underpins the continued investment in the football side. Much of the progress made around that investment in the academy, the recruitment department, and the training ground facilities is behind the scenes, and therefore isn't immediately apparent to those on the outside looking in. For example, we've materially expanded our recruitment department in recent years to increase its efficiency and productivity. Many of the senior staff in these roles have been at the club for over 10 years. Recruitment recommendations and decisions are worked on, on a day-to-day basis by this department and the manager and his team. These investments, together with the commitment we've made to Ole and his coaching staff in March, have given us the building blocks for success. Whilst we are confident, this investment will deliver results, it's important that we are patient while Ole and his team build for the future. We will continue to focus on the long-term strategy and won't be influenced by short-term distractions. As always with Manchester United, speculation around the summer transfer window is intense, and the club was linked with hundreds of players, almost all without foundation. Despite this, our recruitment department's…

Thank you, Ed. This quarter, we built on strong commercial performance year-to-date, perhaps most excitingly on August 16; we announced the findings of the latest Kantar fan survey, which found our worldwide fans and follower base increased by 400 million to 1.1 billion. We listed growth in every region with an approximate 125% increase in Asia. The survey showed that we maintained our position as the most followed football club in the world. This growing popularity and its associated passionate engagement has underpinned success across all of our commercial activities. In terms of venue operations, we indicated last quarter strong start to season ticket sales, selling out in record time. We also achieved our earliest ever sell out of our premium priced executive club tickets this season, and our waiting list demand also remained strong across all products. We've rolled out multiple capital projects at Old Trafford this year as we continue to invest in improvements across multiple areas to enhance the in-stadium experience for our fans. These include VAR capabilities, security upgrades, significant improvements for our disabled fans, as well as a variety of other projects. Our official membership program reached a new high for 2018-2019 at approximately 255,000 members with strong renewals. Engaging with fans beyond the stadium and between games continues to be an area of focus for the club and our media and digital operations are at the forefront of that mission. With respect to our owned and operated platforms and in line with trends to date, our free global mobile app continues to perform ahead of our expectations with improvement across all metrics for the quarter. We passed the anniversary of the first year of activity and can now start to build a picture of what we can expect on a longer basis with this…

Thank you, Richard. Firstly, I'll talk through our fiscal year highlights, and then I will provide more details on our guidance for the upcoming fiscal year. As a reminder, year-on-year comparisons relative to fiscal 2018 been impacted by the new Champions League broadcasting deal. In terms of headline tickets, total revenues for the period was 627.1 million up 37.3 million versus last year with adjusted EBITDA of 185.8 million up 9 million over the last year. Both revenue and EBITDA were in line with previous guidance. Turning to key items in the results, total commercial revenues were 275.1 million, the sponsorship revenues of 173 million being in line with prior year reflecting underlying sponsorship growth offset by reduced tour revenues. Merchandising and licensing revenues were 0.7 million below prior at 102.1 million reflecting some impacts from the late product launches due to the World Cup in 2018. Forecasting revenues increased by 37 million to 241.2 million driven by the increased Champions League revenues from the new broadcasting deal. Match day revenues for the year increased by 1 million to 110.8 million. Moving down the income statement, operating expenses, excluding depreciation amortization, and exceptional items, we're up 6.9% versus the prior year. This includes wages which were up 12.3% primarily due to ongoing investment and first team salaries, including the renegotiation of a number of key first team players. This increase was offset by a 6.8 reduction in other operating expenses for the fiscal year due primarily to the shorter pre-season tour and reduced domestic cup related costs. Amortization costs were 129.2 million for the fiscal year, a decrease of 9.2 million compared to last year. Net finance costs were 22.5 million, an increase of 4.4 million due to foreign exchange movements on the unhedged portion of our U. S. dollar…

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from John Tinker with Gabelli. Please go ahead.

Hi. Quick question. You mentioned, player loans, which I can sometimes find a little confusing in terms of -- I get the transfer market who people are buying and selling. Can you just explain a little why loans have taken off from what they actually mean?

Sure. Hi, John. The loans have been happening for many, many years in the industry, and it is where we retain the registration of a player and they move to another club for a period of time, which could be six months or could be a season. So, they could theoretically come back in January if you have those terms put in there, but then you have a payment that you receive that, that either pays for a portion, all of the wages, or indeed you could have a -- you could receive more than the wages and that's described as a loan fee, and that is all booked against the wage – the overall wage bill of the club.

And I mean to be direct, is this a way of getting around paying agents’ fees or …?

No. No. It has nothing to do with agent fees. It's just an opportunity to -- if you have too many players in one position, but you don't necessarily want to sell a player because you can see a future for them or otherwise, then you may look to loan them rather than sell them. It is becoming more common. You're right, but it's been in the industry for many, many years.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next question today comes from Randy Konik with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Good morning. This is Corey Tarlowe on for Randy Connick. And thank you for taking our question. The brand of Manchester United continues to gain popularity, and we've seen that with global fans increasing from 700 million to over 1 billion. Within the context of this growing fan base, how do you think about the opportunity in China versus where the company is today given the initiatives you have there, the opening of multiple club experience centers, and the increasing appreciation for the sport in the region? Thanks.

Yes. Thanks for the question. I think that the first thing to bear in mind is that, that engagement with our fan base is an incredibly important asset. And yes, that's true across the world. Obviously, an enormous proportion of the family of fans are based in China. So, that does attract a due amount of attention. We've also been visiting there with the teams since the 70s, and so have a long and established track record. And I think that's very consistent with what we see in terms of other organizations that are successful in China in terms of the need to have a long-term plan rather than necessarily any perhaps more opportunistic approaches. And so, our strategy is to engage fans there in the context of being respectful, particularly to both local government and the fan culture there. In terms of that engagement, the strategy of the physical centers coupled with digital engagement and broadening and deepening partner engagement activity, who are able to support us in activating in cities that otherwise we wouldn't be able to reach, I think are the key components of what we're looking at going forward. And in partnership with the work that we do in Adidas, where China is an incredibly important market, I think we're uniquely positioned to really cement those relationships.

Great. Thank you.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. The conference is now also concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.