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Accumulated profits at the music firm owned by Belfast musician Van Morrison last year increased to £8 million (€9.24 million).
New accounts by Morrison’s Exile Productions Ltd show that accumulated profits increased by £440,322 from £7.653 million to £8.093 million in the 12 months to the end of April 2020.
The 75-year old singer-songwriter has been making music for over half a century but found himself at the centre of controversy over a series of anti Covid-19 lockdown songs and statements last year.
In August, the singer urged people to “fight” what he called “the pseudoscience” around Covid-19 and a month later he released, at two-week intervals, a trio of tracks – Born To Be Free, As I Walked Out, and No More Lockdown – containing controversial lyrics.
Earlier this year, Mr Morrison signalled his intention to challenge the Northern Ireland Executive in court over its “blanket ban” on live music in licensed venues arising from Covid-19 restrictions.
The company will have felt the full financial force of the Covid-19 restrictions in the financial year just completed on April 30th, which covered a full year of Covid-19 shutdowns.
However, the year to the end of April 30th, 2020 was impacted by Covid-19 only for the last number of weeks of that year and the new accounts for Exile Productions show that the the cash pile at the company increased by £2.3 million to £8.456 million over the 12 month period.
During the same period, the the money owed to the firm by debtors decreased from £2.2 million to £1.1 million.
The abridged accounts for the Morrison firm do not reveal the revenues recorded by the firm during the year in question. The numbers that the company employed last year increased from three to four.
Mr Morrison is due to release his 42nd record this Friday with gigs scheduled to take place at the Palladium in London in early June.