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Quintessentially, the luxury concierge service for the super-wealthy co-founded by Queen Camilla’s nephew Sir Ben Elliot, has reported a £2.1m loss despite cutting jobs and buying extra time to repay £15m worth of loans.
The firm, which Elliot, a former co-chair of the Conservative party, founded in 2000, said there was still “material uncertainty” about the company’s ability to operate beyond the next year if sales slumped or it failed to get fresh funding. It came as the company reported a £2.1m loss for the year to April 2024.
It leaves a cloud over a business known for securing tables and tickets for millionaires at fully booked restaurants and events, and liaising with admissions officers at top private schools. Quintessentially has also worked with government, having reportedly been paid £1.4m by the Department for International Trade to make introductions to “attract the right high-value individual investors to the UK” between 2016 and 2020.
Accounts filed at Companies House explained that while it had enough money to continue operating for another 12 months, an unexpected slump in business and a subsequent lack of emergency funding could result in its failure. “This creates material uncertainty that may ultimately cast doubt about the company and the group’s ability to continue as a going concern,” it warned.
It was unable to pay dividends to shareholders – including Elliot– “due to accumulated losses”.
Despite the warning, a spokesperson for the company highlighted that one of the company’s main lenders and shareholders had written a letter of support expressing its confidence in the business, and had committed to provide future financial backing and an extension on existing loan terms and facilities.
“In addition, the continued growth in revenues, underpinned by new business wins and a recently implemented significant cost-cutting programme, is projected to return the group to profitability into 2025,” the accounts said.
While the company reported a 12% rise in revenues to £29.6m, Quintessentially’s bosses said the overall loss reflected the fact that it had made “significant” investments in the business. That includes a new app, which it launched at the start of last year. It also embarked on a hiring spree in an attempt to increase revenues.
But ongoing losses have forced the company to reverse some of that growth and cut an undisclosed number of jobs. “To address this, the group has gone through a cost-cutting exercise,” the company accounts stated. That included a “review and renegotiation of operational contracts as well as a focused headcount reduction programme”.
However, the group employed 252 staff at last count, up from 218 a year earlier. Quintessentially said it was now on track to “trade profitably in the final six months of the current financial year to 30 April 2025”, as it cheered progress on a new joint venture in Saudi Arabia and renewed corporate contracts with companies including Mastercard.
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It is unclear whether that will be enough to cover £15m worth of loans that are falling due next month.
In September, Quintessentially convinced World Fuel Services, one of its largest shareholders, to extend the repayment deadline for two loans, now totalling £12m and £3m. Those loans are now due to be repaid by 25 February 2025.
A spokesperson for Quintessentially denied that the company had had to secure extra time to repay the loan and that WFS loan had always renewed the facility every year “which is what the company and its directors expect for this year as well”.
Quintessentially has suffered some historic missteps. In its 2019 accounts, Quintessentially admitted to making £7m worth of accounting errors and paying out £1.4m in unlawful dividends. BDO resigned as auditor in 2023 and has since been replaced by a smaller accountancy firm, Sopher + Co.
