DUBLIN: Turnover at Oasis Retail Services Ltd, which runs gambling gaming centres across Northern Ireland, also increased to £8.1m for the year to December 2015 – up from £7.4m.
The company says it was “pleased with the overall performance”. It stated that during 2015, it continued to invest in the refurbishment of its existing gaming machines. “As will be observed from the financial statements, the company maintained its period of growth of pre-tax profits,” the company revealed in its accounts.
Oasis was set up by Belfast businessman Gerald Steinberg. Sales across the business increased by almost 10% in the space of a year, rising to £8.1m. And pre-tax profits at the company were also up during the year, rising from £1.2m to £1.9m.
The company posted profits for the year of £1.5m, after tax. That was up from £944,000 a year earlier. The company operates from its head office at Oasis House in Newtownabbey. Oasis’s workforce also grew during the same period, increasing from 111 to 127 members of staff.
As a result, the total wage costs for workers increased from £2.2m to £2.5m. The company’s tax bill also rose – it paid £2.3m to HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs) in respect of a range of taxes including machine games duty, National Insurance, VAT and corporation tax.
The firm also supplies products to bookmakers and pubs across Northern Ireland, including jukeboxes, poker machines and pool tables. The total remuneration from company directors increased slightly during the course of the year, up from £232,449 to £237,373. Oasis says it operates as part of parent company Oasis Leisure Group Limited.
The company is still controlled by Mr Steinberg, who owns the majority of that company’s issued share capital. Aside from gaming machines, the business also deals in arcade machines, air hockey tables and prize cranes.
Oasis has 11 locations across Northern Ireland, including a number in Belfast, at Wellington Place, North Street, Ormeau Road, Shaftesbury Square and Boucher Road. Oasis also operates gaming businesses in Ballymena, Newtownabbey, Lisburn, Coleraine, Bangor and Newcastle. The firm was founded by Mr Steinberg in 1968.
He left school at 16 to pursue a career in business and later became President of the Belfast Chamber of Trade and Commerce.
He was also a director of Belfast City Centre Management. Mr Steinberg is the brother of the late peer, Leonard Steinberg. The Belfast-born businessman, who died in 2009, was a senior member of the Conservative Party. He was the founder and non-executive chairman of Stanley Leisure Ltd. The business was founded in Belfast in 1958.
In 1977, Mr Steinberg was shot five times on the doorstep of his home on the Antrim Road by the Provisional IRA.
