In an interesting move announced by the club in a letter to all shareholders, Everton are planning to pay a £20 Dividend per share, on the back of their acquisition of Everton Women. The total payout will be around £44M, with vast majority of it (99.7%) going to The Friedkin Group via Roundhouse Capital.
The payout comes off Everton's bottom line, and therefore substantially reduces the monies available in January for the opening of the transfer window, at least adding context to the management of expectations by David Moyes as 1 January approaches.
This news followed a series of complex financial restructurings by the club's owners, The Friedkin Group (TFG), operating through their investment vehicle, Roundhouse Capital Holdings, who own both Everton FC and Everton Women.
The move is rooted in the sale and separation of Everton Football Club Women (EFCW) from the main football club to create a self-standing independent entity.
1. The Sale of Everton Women (EFCW)
The dividend is funded by the proceeds from the internal sale of Everton Football Club Women Ltd:
-
Ownership of the women’s team was transferred from Everton Football Club to Roundhouse Capital Holdings, which is the same parent entity that owns the men's team.
-
The deal, which includes the transfer of Goodison Park (now the permanent home for the women's team), was reported to be worth between £44M and £65M.
-
By selling the women's team to a parent company, Everton can record the sale as "pure profit" on the accounts of the main company, EFC Co Ltd. This helps the club comply with the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) as well as the upcoming Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) rules.
2. The Dividend Proposal
On 24 December 2024, it was revealed that the Everton Board of Directors proposed using these sale proceeds to pay a dividend to all existing shareholders:
-
Amount: Approximately £20 per share.
-
Total Payout: Given there are roughly 2.2 million shares in issue, the total distribution is approximately £44M.
-
Who gets it? While the payment is "to all shareholders," the vast majority (99.7%) will go back to Roundhouse Capital Holdings (ie, The Friedkin Group) because they own almost all the shares. The remaining amount will be paid to the small minority of individual shareholders.
3. Financial and Capital Reduction
A key part of the TFG takeover last year involved putting in place key strategies to tackle the huge accumulated losses, which were partly funded by Moshiri's shareholder loans to the tune of £451M, as well as highly dubious "payday" loans at high interest from the likes of 777 Partners.
Moshiri's loans were converted to equity (ie, Everton Shares) by TFG as the first step of the takeover, while the other problematic loans were resolved.
To legally allow the payment of a dividend despite years of losses, the club had to sort out the dreadful state of its balance sheet:
-
The club used credit from its Share Premium Account to offset its Accumulated P&L Deficit (just over £650M as of June 2025).
- The deficit had been allowed to build up by the end of June 2025, over the blighted years of mismanagement by Farhad Moshiri and his cohorts.
-
This required a 75% shareholder vote and a solvency statement from the directors. This process effectively resets the Profit & Loss account on the balance sheet to zero, a necessary step that legally enables the company to distribute cash as dividends.
It may also reflect the huge investment that had to be made to fund the construction of the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock while the ongoing operations of the club were maintained.
However, the more direct impact was to available transfer funds, which had withered away under Moshiri, largely as a result of sanctions placed on Russian oligarchs that were brought in by the UK government in response to the brutal invasion of Ukraine, 4 years ago
The Inevitable Controversy
The timing of the announcement could not be more precipitous with the Everton men's team in desperate need of reinforcements during the upcoming January transfer window.
However, David Moyes has already spoken out to pour cold water on the prospect that significant new player acquisitions will be made in January. Perhaps the removal of £44M in cash from the potential transfer fund is a more cogent reason for his management of fans' expectations?
More concerning might be the underlying objectives of Everton's American ownership by TFG, where capital is king, with the perennial need to show that their investments are producing a decent return. What better Christmas present for the Dan Friedkin Family than getting back some of the huge sums they have invested?
£43M extracted from plucky little Everton Football Club will do for starters!
Reader Comments (7)
Note: the following content is not moderated or vetted by the site owners at the time of submission. Comments are the responsibility of the poster. Disclaimer ()
Editorial Team
2 Posted 27/12/2025 at 11:29:39
I've had a go at trying to explain what has been going on, and what it might mean -- not for poverty-stricken Everton Shareholders -- but for the transfer kitty, which appears to have been plundered by The Friedkin Group.
Follow the money…
3 Posted 27/12/2025 at 13:20:42
I read about this on Everton NewsNow I think, which I would admit is a terrible site full of non-existent transfer speculation and other assorted bullhit. (Toffee Web's going that way.)
Anyway they spun the story as a positive, claiming our transfer kitty could be boosted. I think I'm more likely to believe Paul Quinn's interpretation. Bit worrying.
4 Posted 27/12/2025 at 14:56:31
If you are a minority shareholder, you should have an account at Signal Shares.
5 Posted 27/12/2025 at 14:56:31
But, any way you cut it, this seems like a massive kick in the balls to all Everton fans who want to see real progress being made with team building in very single transfer window.
We all know what players we need till we're blue in the face reading it on here. But this surely sends a very clear message: that extracting a profit from the club takes a high priority over team building.
Or am I wrong?
6 Posted 27/12/2025 at 21:48:17
To an uneducated person like myself, it looks like Usmanov, tried to put money into the club, by paying overinflated sponsorship prices, but TFG, are taking money out of the club, by selling the women’s team, to another one of their investment companies?
Hopefully I haven’t quite read this right, because it doesn’t look very good if what I’m writing has got any truth in it.
7 Posted 27/12/2025 at 21:57:25
Add Your Comments
In order to post a comment, you need to be logged in as a registered user of the site.
Or Sign up as a ToffeeWeb Member — it's free, takes just a few minutes and will allow you to post your comments on articles and Talking Points submissions across the site.
How to get rid of these ads and support TW
1 Posted 27/12/2025 at 11:12:29
Paul has been a big supporter of The Friedkin Group's takeover of the club, but the piece he wrote today is a bit worrying to say the least. He says " financial news released around this holiday period can often be viewed as companies wishing to bury news."
He says this is something our previous owners did, and he thought it surprising that our new owners, acting in the name of Roundhouse Capital Holdings, would inform shareholders of the dividend they would pay on some or all of the proceeds from the sale of the women's team.
They propose to pay around £20 per share, he estimates the pay out would reduce Everton's balances by around £43.98M.
He then rightly questions is this the right time to make such a payment given the recruitment requirements that will be needed in this January window.