The cash profile of an annual show peaks months before the revenue does

In April the group holds more cash than at any other point in its year. A show director sees the treasury report, notices that the June edition is 88 per cent sold, and asks why a 60,000 spend on a hosted buyer programme cannot be approved when there is that much money in the bank.

The answer is that almost none of it has been earned. Getting the cash profile of an annual show onto one page, next to the revenue profile, ends this argument permanently, and it takes an afternoon in a spreadsheet.

Why does cash arrive before the revenue does?

The two clocks run on different mechanisms. Cash follows the contract and the deposit schedule. Revenue follows delivery, which for an exhibition happens on show days and nowhere else.

Emerald Holding sets out the whole model in its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2025, and one sentence in the revenue note carries most of it: "Fees are typically invoiced and collected in-full prior to the trade show or event." The same filing describes the timing in detail: cash deposits start to be received as early as twelve months prior to a show taking place, the balance of booth space fees is typically received in cash one month prior, and the company's exhibitors pay in full in advance of each trade show while the bulk of direct expenses are paid close to or after the show.

That last clause is the part organisers underweight. Both curves are shifted, and they are shifted in opposite directions. The money comes in early and goes out late, and the gap between them is the cash an events business appears to have.

Everything collected before doors open sits on the balance sheet as a liability the business still has to work off, and it clears in a single entry when the edition runs.

The collection curve on one edition

Take a show with 8.4 million of contracted value, doors on 12 June, campaign opening with on-site rebooking at the previous edition the June before. Terms are 50 per cent with the signed contract and the balance due 90 days before doors.

Contracted value builds through the year. At the end of the first month, with rebooking done on the floor of the outgoing edition, 2.18 million is signed, 26 per cent of where the edition will finish. By month six the book is at 4.87 million, 58 per cent. By month nine it reaches 6.64 million, 79 per cent, and by month eleven 7.90 million, or 94 per cent.

Cash lags the contracts, then jumps. Through the first nine months the only money arriving is deposits, running at half of whatever has been signed. At the end of month nine the balance invoices on everything contracted have gone out, worth 3.32 million, and 2.56 million of them has cleared. Add the 3.32 million of deposits already banked and the edition has collected 5.88 million.

That is 70.0 per cent of the show's value, three months before anybody walks in. Recognised revenue at the same date is zero. On the balance sheet the edition carries a deferred revenue liability of 6.64 million, matched by 5.88 million in the bank and 0.76 million of receivables still outstanding.

Half the edition's cash lands about 145 days before doors open, and all of its revenue lands on one morning in June. The median collection date is worth computing once per show, because it tells a treasury team when the money actually turns up, and it moves whenever the instalment dates move.

The cost curve runs the other way

Venue money moves early, and it is the only line that does. On this edition 1.4 million of venue deposits has been paid by the end of month nine, staged against a hall contract signed years before. Marketing has spent 0.7 million of a 1.6 million budget by the same point, because the heavy audience acquisition weeks sit in the final quarter of the campaign.

So at month nine the edition holds 5.88 million collected against 2.1 million paid out, a net position of 3.78 million with nothing recognised.

By the morning of the show, collections have reached 8.06 million, 96 per cent of the edition. Payments out have reached 3.8 million: 1.9 million to the venue, 1.5 million of marketing, and 0.4 million of contractor deposits. Net edition cash at doors is 4.26 million, and that is the peak.

Then it drains. The remaining 0.8 million of direct cost, mostly contractor invoices that arrive during breakdown week and settle over the following 60 days, goes out after the show. The last 0.1 million of marketing settles. A further 0.28 million of receipts arrives, and 0.06 million is written off. The edition closes at 3.64 million of cash, against a contribution of 3.7 million on 8.4 million of revenue less 3.1 million of direct cost and 1.6 million of marketing.

Those two figures agree, which is the check worth doing. Cash and contribution differ by exactly the 0.06 million written off. Everything else between them was timing.

Where the peak misleads

The peak of 4.26 million on the morning of the show overstates the edition by 620,000, because 620,000 of what is sitting in the account at that moment is contractor money in transit. Read the same account four weeks earlier and the overstatement is larger, since none of the breakdown invoices have arrived.

This matters when a business runs several editions on staggered dates, because the peaks overlap. A portfolio with four shows in the first half and two in the second holds its group cash high in the spring for reasons that have nothing to do with trading, and any incentive plan or investment gate hung off a cash balance at a fixed date will reward the calendar.

The discipline is to report cash by edition and by phase, with four figures against every open show: collected, paid, committed but not yet invoiced, and contracted but not yet billed. The last two are what stop a peak being spent, since they are the parts of the edition that have no entry anywhere yet.

What does this do to a group's reported cash conversion?

It makes it look extraordinary, and the effect is real while the business grows.

Informa PLC's 2025 full year results report operating cash flow conversion of 105.8 per cent, up from 104.4 per cent in 2024, and free cash flow of 884.8 million pounds against 812.1 million the year before. Converting more than all of your adjusted operating profit into operating cash is unusual in most industries and normal in this one.

The reconciliation shows where it comes from. Informa reports a working capital inflow of 47.1 million pounds in the year, against 32.9 million in 2024, on adjusted operating profit of 1,139.8 million pounds. That inflow alone accounts for 4.1 percentage points of the 105.8 per cent, and it exists because the forward book is bigger at the end of the year than it was at the start.

Run the same portfolio flat for a year and the working capital line goes to roughly nothing. Run it down and the line turns negative, which is a mechanism worth understanding in advance, since the year it bites is a poor time to meet it for the first time.

Treating pre-show cash as available

An organiser holding 5.88 million against an unstaged edition has a genuine liquidity position and no headroom. The obligation attached to that money is to deliver a show, and the cost of delivering it has mostly not been paid yet.

Two practical rules keep this straight. First, any spend approved against pre-show cash should be tested against the edition's forecast contribution, since that is the only part of the balance the business gets to keep. On the show above, the number available for discretionary spend at month nine is a share of 3.7 million, and none of the 5.88 million sitting in the account.

Second, size the refund exposure explicitly. If the edition cancelled at month nine, 5.88 million would be repayable while 2.1 million had already gone out, which is a 2.1 million hole before any cancellation cost. That figure belongs in the risk register with a number against it, updated monthly, and it is the honest version of what the pre-show balance means.

Where this stops

The shape of the curve is set by your payment terms, and payment terms are a commercial decision that changes. Move the balance invoice from 90 days out to 30 days and the month nine position on this edition falls from 5.88 million to 3.32 million with no change in what was sold. Comparing cash profiles across shows or across years without checking the terms first will produce a difference that is entirely administrative.

The curve also assumes an edition that grows or holds. A show losing 15 per cent of its floor collects less this year while paying out the venue commitment agreed when it was bigger, and the peak arrives lower and later. That is where the model stops being comfortable, and the point at which the revenue is recognised does not move at all, since recognition still waits for show day whatever the cash did.

Build the curve for your next edition. Two columns, one row per month: cash collected to date and cash paid to date, both cumulative, with the deferred revenue balance beside them and a zero in the revenue column until show month. Circulate it to whoever approves in-year spend, because on most shows it is the first time anybody has seen the two lines together, and it is the cheapest piece of event finance reporting available.