Last week, the latest management report was discussed with the Executive Board. This report provides insight into UT's finances from 1 January to 31 October 2023. Given the current financial situation, which we wrote about earlier, this is an important document to see how we are doing.
UT expects a negative result of €8.7 million at the end of the year. This is better than the expected negative result of 15.5 million euros, which was projected when the budget was set at the beginning of the year. The fact that the result is more positive than budgeted is mainly due to some incidental windfalls. The expected operational result is minus 26 million euros, which is close to budget, but less than targeted.
Incidental windfalls
The somewhat more positive result is mainly caused by some incidental windfalls. For instance, expenditure on energy costs was lower due to falling energy prices, less consumption and compensation from the national government. This leads to an advantage of almost four million euros. UT also received more interest on funds outstanding at the bank due to higher interest rates (€3.1 million more than budgeted at the beginning of the year). Another big windfall is a refund from the Tax Office for VAT paid from 2016-2021. This provides EUR 1.1 million more than previously expected.
Operational result
The result of structural income and expenditure seems to be close to the expected result at the end of the year. We expect to end up doing around 375 thousand euros better than budgeted.
We are happy that we are doing better than budgeted. Still, we want to stress that it remains necessary to steer tightly on increasing income and limiting expenditure in the coming period as well, so that we maintain our financial resilience.
Outperforming our budget
In 2023, we focused on achieving the best possible operational result, better than estimated. This is necessary given the financial challenges ahead of us in the coming years, for example, due to lagging student intake. Increased costs and other influences made achieving our financial targets more difficult than previously thought. This also prompted us, along with service departments and faculties, to look for ways to reduce expenditure and increase income. We will continue to do so actively in the coming period.
