Newcastle's chief executive David Hopkinson says Eddie Howe's future will be discussed "when the time is right" as the club announced record revenues of £335.3m for the year ending June 2025.
The Magpies' turnover is up £15m from the previous year and commercial revenues have increased 44 per cent to £120.1m, but those figures remain significantly less than the Premier League's top clubs. Liverpool reported record revenues of £700m in their latest financial results, and Manchester United's projected revenue is £640m.
Newcastle's latest results do not reflect revenue from this season's Champions League or the British record sale of Alexander Isak to Liverpool for £125m in August.
Despite recording a profit of £129m by selling St James' Park to a company attached to themselves, Hopkinson admitted that a "box office" summer signing may only be possible with a notable sale.
Howe's future at Newcastle has been subject to speculation, with the club 12th in the Premier League - 12 points behind fourth-place Aston Villa with seven games left - and coming off a home derby defeat to newly promoted rivals Sunderland. Howe's side were also torn apart in the Champions League by Barcelona in the second half of the second leg of their round of 16 meeting.
Asked about Howe's future, Hopkinson said: "I don't have a stance on his future. What I can tell you is that the derby loss hurt. We take it seriously. There's nothing within us that thinks 'well, it's just three points and on we go'. It has resonated.
"I spent a couple of hours in a one-on-one lunch recently with Eddie [Howe] and we talked through a multitude of things, including that.
"Eddie's our manager. I expect to have a great run to the end of the season here and we'll talk about the future when it's time.
"Right now, we're focused on this season's competition."
Pressed further as to whether he was leaving Howe's future open, he added:
"I would not frame it that way. We are not looking to make a change at the moment. We are not having those conversations.
"We are still in the midst of the season. Right now we are focused on the seven matches we have remaining and not distracting ourselves with speculation about what we may or may not do in the summer.
"Right now, all of us have only got so much bandwidth and we are focused on this season and finishing strongly."
Alongside Howe's future, Sandro Tonali is another who has been heavily linked with a departure from the North East.
Should Tonali leave the club, it would represent back-to-back departures of marquee players at St James' Park after Isak left last summer. Isak's exit was a long, drawn-out affair that included the Sweden international training away from the squad and releasing a damning statement before his move was complete.
Responding to a direct question about Tonali, Hopkinson says players will leave on Newcastle's terms.
"We haven't got an overall strategy with regard to players out, necessarily," he said.
"We think through what players might or might not want to do this summer. But if an Isak-like scenario presents itself again, any player under contract is going to leave on our terms and we're going to maximise the opportunity that might represent for the club.
"Going forward, our strategy is to buy well and sell well. Buying well does not necessarily mean spending the most money. It means working in the marketplace for the players that generate the most value for this club rather than the fee paid for them.
"So there are a multitude of things we need to employ, including developing our own, looking for opportunities in the marketplace and making sure we are maximising our opportunity within the available price we can produce."
Your Site News' Keith Downie:
I said on air last week that it looks like this summer could be one of change at Newcastle United, and nothing David Hopkinson has said in the last 24 hours has made me change that view.
Without Champions League football it's going to be hard to keep the prize assets at St James' Park, with the Premier League vultures circling. Even without big name departures, Newcastle need fresh blood. As many as eight new signings could arrive, depending on departures.
But here's the thing. Newcastle need to sell. They admit it themselves.
"Going forward, our strategy is to buy well and sell well," said Hopkinson.
Hopkinson wasn't in situ when Alexander Isak was sold on deadline day for a Premier League transfer record but also said: "To me, Isak was a good sale".
Try telling that to the Newcastle fans, still smarting from a bruising summer that saw their best player go on strike to force a move to a league rival.
Hopkinson can be forgiven. He wasn't around back then, and didn't live and breathe the emotion of that particular transfer rollercoaster.
But his words on player sales were honest and up front, and showed that the club plan to learn from the mistakes of last summer. And if nothing else it manages the expectation of fans going into the summer transfer window.
"If an Isak-like scenario presents itself again, any player under contract is going to leave on our terms and we're going to maximise the opportunity," he added.
That leaves fans under no illusion that sales will take place this summer to help them in turn freshen up the squad, with the likes of Sandro Tonali, Anthony Gordon and Tino Livramento the exact sort of players Newcastle could extract maximum value from.
There seemed to be a lot of variables from Hopkinson's answers, and those can be reflected in a season of ups and downs.
Even the manager's future was open to interpretation.
Asked twice about what the future holds for Eddie Howe, the CEO said any talks on that subject were on hold until the season comes to an end. "We'll talk about the future when it's time," he said.
It certainly left a question mark over Howe's future, whether intentional or not.
A lot happened last summer…and it feels like another frenetic one could potentially be on the horizon, on a number of fronts.
What about the financial figures? Newcastle top-lined their press release with news of a 44 per cent increase in commercial revenue. It looks and sounds very positive, but to compete with the Premier League's top clubs for league titles and new signings, they need that number to at least double.
While turnover rose five per cent to £335m, that's still half of what the likes of Liverpool, Man City and Arsenal rake in. And until Newcastle's commercial revenue streams are competitive with their competitors, they are always going to be in their slipstream.
They are on an upward trajectory, but it's not at the rate fans feel they were promised when the PIF takeover was pushed through in 2021, or when Hopkinson took over as CEO earlier this season. Yes they are hamstrung by PSR, but commercial revenue growth hasn't been as fast as many of a black and white persuasion hoped or expected.
These financial results predate Canadian Hopkinson's time on Tyneside, and don't include the Champions League prize money from this season's European adventure, so Hopkinson deserves time to make his mark.
But fans will still be asking why the club haven't helped themselves by gaining sponsorship for the training ground, or why they have waited until there's virtually no PSR benefit to sell the stadium to themselves and lease it back. That surely could've been done a couple of years ago.
Hopkinson said in his interview to accompany the financial figures that Newcastle "can get there quickly". But how quickly? By 2030, he said back in December. Twelve months is a long time in football, but only then, when Newcastle announce their figures for Hopkinson's first season in charge, can the ex-Real Madrid chief be properly judged.
Newcastle sold St James' Park to a company attached to themselves, and then leased the stadium back, leading to a profit of £129m. But Newcastle chief financial officer Simon Capper says the club would be "constrained" and "limited" in how they use that money, and it may leave fans asking why they didn't do this earlier to make their lives easier in a PSR world.
"Because of the consequence of the profit calculated on the sale, it gives us a significant amount of PSR headroom," Capper said.
"The ability to deploy that PSR headroom is very limited because we have to comply with UEFA rules and because the PSR regime is coming to an end, so that profit does not roll forward into squad cost. In a very narrow window, yes (it gives us more scope to spend on players), but we are very constrained in how we can use that."
