Electric Picnic owner returns to the black with €30m profit

The owner of the Electric Picnic festival returned to the black in 2021, recording pretax profits of £26.56 million (€29.89 million).

Promoter Denis Desmond co-owns the joint venture with Live Nation. New accounts show LN-Gaiety Holdings Ltd returned to profit in 2021 as revenues increased more than six-fold from £33.97 million to £205.99 million.

The £26.56 million pretax profit for 2021 followed the UK-based business recording pretax losses of £10.4 million in 2020 despite the group receiving a £30.6 million insurance payout for Covid-19 event cancellations.

One of the company’s subsidiaries is the Dublin-based business that operates the Electric Picnic festival, EP Republic Ltd.

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Three members of the Desmond family sit on the board of the joint venture company – Denis Desmond, his wife Caroline Desmond and their son Zach Desmond.

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The directors disclose that the firm in 2021 paid out a dividend of £4.87 million to non-controlling interests. This followed a dividend payout of £2.28 million in 2020.

In a post balance sheet event, the accounts show that this year, the group purchased a non-controlling interest in an unnamed festival for an initial payment of £6.9 million.

In 2020, the group purchased Mr Desmond’s MCD Productions for £48.3 million. Mr Desmond and other shareholders in his Gaiety Investments stood to effectively receive around half of the proceeds – £24.15 million – from the deal as they retain half a shareholding in MCD through their 50-50 venture with LN Gaiety Holdings Ltd.

With the easing of Covid restrictions in 2021, numbers attending LN Gaiety Holding events increased more than three-fold from 999,062 to 3.26 million in 2021.

More liberal Covid-19 rules by the UK Government in 2021 meant that the group’s Leeds and Reading music festivals could go ahead in contrast to the Republic, where Electric Picnic was cancelled for two years in a row.

The directors note that the majority of the group’s business is in the UK while it has an operating subsidiary in the Republic. A breakdown of revenues shows that £195.69 million was generated in the UK and £10.29 million in ‘Europe’.

Numbers employed grew from 543 to 609 as staff costs increased from £15.97 million to £17.56 million.

The group received £5.9 million in Government grants that related to the UK Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, the Arts Council Cultural Recovery Fund and funding from local councils.

The group’s cash funds increased from £106.58 million. to £165.76 million.