Williams Sees Profits Accelerate at LinesMaker

Williams Sees Profits Accelerate

The Williams For­mula 1 team has seen prof­its for 2010 rise by 28% after what it says was a “solid” financial year.

Pre-tax profit was £5.8m after the cost of invest­ing £1.9m in energy firm Williams Hybrid Power and the Williams Tech­nol­ogy Cen­tre in Qatar.

Team Prin­ci­pal Sir Frank Williams said 2010 had been one of the tough­est years for attract­ing sponsorship.

As part of the firm’s plan “to take the busi­ness for­ward”, it listed on the Frank­furt stock exchange in March.

Shares in the firm were vir­tu­ally unchanged after the announcement.

Super­car

Chair­man Adam Parr said its ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing and list­ing had “secured the team’s long-term future by pro­vid­ing a sus­tain­able own­er­ship structure”.

Part of the new Williams’ strat­egy this spring was to secure a part­ner­ship with a lead­ing car manufacturer.

Last week, plans to build a hybrid super­car in con­junc­tion with Jaguar were announced.

Fol­low­ing the stock mar­ket launch, Sir Frank Williams has remained major­ity share­holder and team principal.

“Com­mer­cially, 2010 has given Williams a solid foun­da­tion from which to grow,” he said.

He said Williams was look­ing to build on that through the joint ven­ture with Jaguar Land Rover, and was seek­ing fur­ther devel­op­ments in its power and technology firms.

Oil deal

Williams are one of the most suc­cess­ful teams in F1, but they have slipped from the pedestal they occu­pied when they dom­i­nated the sport for much of the 1980s and 1990s.

They have not won a cham­pi­onship since 1997 and last won a grand prix in 2004. In recent years, they have strug­gled to raise the bud­get required to com­pete at the front.

The team has yet to score any points this year.

Williams fin­ished sixth in the con­struc­tors’ cham­pi­onship in 2010, while at the Brazil­ian Grand Prix, Ger­man dri­ver Nico Hulken­berg took their first pole posi­tion for five years.

Hulken­berg has not been retained for 2011 after Williams decided to take on the Venezue­lan rookie Pas­tor Maldonado.

His pres­ence is linked to a multi-year, multi-million pound spon­sor­ship deal with his country’s state oil com­pany, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).

“Amidst one of the harsh­est spon­sor­ship envi­ron­ments for a long time, we signed PDVSA and upgraded and extended exist­ing part­ners, Rand­stad and Oris,” said Mr Williams.

Their lead dri­ver con­tin­ues to be Brazil­ian vet­eran Rubens Bar­richello, a for­mer Fer­rari dri­ver who has com­peted in more grands prix than any other dri­ver in history.

Related Posts:

• Rubens Backs Williams to Turn Things Around
• Head to End Direct F1 Involve­ment at Williams
• It’s Woods vs. Williams in Pres­i­dents Cup Pairings
• Williams Says He Should Have Left Woods After Last Win
• Kyle Williams Could Miss Rest of Season

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