United publish financial information quarterly. The last available information is for 31/3/2025. That means their public info is more up to date than pretty much anyone else in the league.
I've spoken in the past about their underlying debt (i.e. cash liabilities less cash receivables) which has hovered around £1bn for a couple of years now. It's only at that level because they've had £238m of equity injected by Big Sir Jim. They're still at that level in March 2025, albeit about £30m lower than at December, and with £73m cash on hand plus a further £90m unused bank facility.
Their wage bill has come down quite a bit compared to the previous nine months. Like for like it's down about £43m for the nine months, but it's not clear how much of that will be fluctuations in player wages rather than staff (I suspect a lot). I don't think the staff lay-offs will save them a huge amount long-term, particularly after they've had to pay third parties to do some of the work of the people they let go.
Their cash flow in the last nine months was break-even, despite raising £260m through financing (£180m bank debt, £80m share issue).
Adjusting out their financing cash flows and the payments for players, their underlying cash flow was a negative £64m - i.e. the underlying business is NOT throwing off cash.
Their squad cost is over £1bn, a limit we only just hit recently (we'll be back below that now Lucho has gone) - who has the better squad?
So it feels like they're still in a mess, particularly since the underlying business isn't throwing off cash. They probably have the wiggle room to keep going, but that's only because Big Jim has put cash into the business over the last couple of years. It looks like he will need to do the same again and/or they will need to raise more bank debt, since the alternative, reining in their expenditure, doesn't seem to be on the table.
