HMV Loses Another £16 Million

British retailer HMV, which is trying to unload its live music business including London venues Hammersmith Apollo and The Forum. expects a pre-tax loss of £16 million for the year ending April 28, leaving it with debts of about £168 million.

Business analysts had pitched the expected loss at about £5 million, but they’d also said the end-of-year debt would be in the region of £180 million.

The 91-year-old company reckons on making £10 million in the current year, while the UK business papers have been forecasting further losses of about £5 million.

It’s questionable whether the latest figures will do much to pacify investors, who’ve seen the share price tumble by 64 percent in the last year, closing at 3.7 pence May 3.

HMV chief exec Simon Fox’s bid to transform the company from a high street retailer into a 360-degree music company appears to have come unstuck.

The core business of selling CDs and DVDs has been hampered by online retailers, illegal downloading, and supermarkets offering the same product at lower prices.

It’s now adding a weak release schedule to that list, which apparently caused like-for-like sales to drop 12.9 percent for the last quarter of 2011.

It’s not as if Fox hasn’t put the company through major surgery. He’s cut the number of stores to about 250, trimmed the workforce to 4,500 and hived off HMV’s Canadian business and its Waterstones book shops.

The venues, festivals and management companies it acquired for about £60 million in January 2010 are now on the block for roughly the same amount.

There have been doubts about the value of HMV’s management interests since James Sandom, Cerne Canning and Deb Fenstermacher from HMV’s SuperVision Management confirmed industry gossip by announcing they’ve joined Red Light Management, the U.S. giant that looks after Dave Matthews Band, Alicia Keys and many others.

The acts departing SuperVision en route to Red Light include Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, The Vaccines, Crystal Castles, The Cribs and White Lies, among others.

It may not be too much of a concern for bidders more interested in HMV’s venues, which include London’s Hammersmith Apollo and The Forum.

HMV’s festivals include The Next Big Thing, The Great Escape, Lovebox, Global Gathering and High Voltage.

Those interested in buying all or part of HMV’s music business portfolio reportedly include AEG Live, German ticketing giant CTS Eventim, Sony Music, Oakley Capital – the private equity firm behind Time Out magazine – and venue operator Academy Music Group.