The Horse of the Year Hawke's Bay company has missed out on funding from a gaming trust application, causing a net profit of $6944 rather than the budgeted $68,600, says the board chair and Hastings councillor, Cynthia Bowers.
The latest financial report, not yet presented to the Hastings District Council or its finance and monitoring committee, showed the profit was substantially less than what was budgeted.
"The reason for it being less than what we had budgeted was a shortfall in some [money] being received from gaming trusts," Cr Bowers said.
"We had budgeted to receive a certain amount of dollars from a gaming trust. Because the Horse of the Year [company] was slow to be established - it didn't really get established until about August last year and its financial year status on the first of June - because we've effectively only had about nine months that we were operating as a company, we didn't have the amount of time to lodge the amount of applications to the gaming trust."
Councillor and Hastings mayoral candidate Wayne Bradshaw had questioned the financial results and why they had not been released publicly, which he said should be within 90 days of the balance date, as per the shareholders' agreement.