The coronavirus hits the gyms of Barcelona. The luxury Metropolitan chain closed the year 2020 with a turnover of 35.6 million euros, a 41% less than in 2019, when it registered a turnover of 61.1 million.
To alleviate this collapse, the company led by Jose Antonio Castro and Javier Pellon made use of two main measures. The first, an ERTE for more than a thousand employees, which allowed labor expenses to be reduced from 18 to 13 million.
LOANS
The second consisted of hiring two loans totaling 1 million euros, endorsed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the reciprocal guarantee company Avalis. They are taxed at an average interest of 1.20% and expire in July 2025.
According to the latest accounts deposited in the Mercantile Registry, the network of sports centers closed the year 2020 in losses. The head of the Metropolitan Spain group declared some red numbers before taxes of 1.4 million, an amount that contrasts with the 3.3 million profit that was pocketed in 2019.
With the aim of safeguarding jobs, the Barcelona company launched an ERTE for 1,100 workers between the months of April and June 2020. Subsequently, depending on the restrictions and anticovid measures adopted by each community, the group announced another regulatory file.
Metropolitan has 21 centers in the main cities of Spain and one in France. In Barcelona the group has five, in Madrid there are four and in cities like Zaragoza and Bilbao there are a couple.
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TYCOON IN BARCELONA
Metropolitan’s main shareholder is Jose Antonio Castro Sousa, a multimillionaire of Galician origins who has lived in Barcelona for many decades. In his long business history, Metropolitan means a small investment that he made years ago to diversify his fortune.
Most of its capital is concentrated in the hotel Hesperia, which manages 22 urban lodgings and five resorts in Venezuela. The pandemic caused Hesperia historical losses of 48 million euros, much higher than its income, which was limited to 30 million. The hole caused by the coronavirus has been so deep that the hotel chain had to request aid of 55 million from the Government’s rescue fund.
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