Princess Yachts' Profit Jumps 167% After a GBP 17m Loss

What did Princess Yachts actually report for 2025?

Princess Yachts posted an adjusted EBITDA of GBP 35.9 million for the year ended 31 December 2025, up 167 percent from GBP 13.4 million in 2024, with profit before tax of GBP 9.4 million against a GBP 17 million loss the year before.

The Plymouth builder's audited results show operating profit of GBP 17.6 million, a GBP 25.7 million swing from an GBP 8.1 million operating loss in 2024. Revenue for the year came in at GBP 321.8 million, down from GBP 378.1 million, which the company attributes to lower production volumes and a deliberate decision to align output more closely with demand rather than chase turnover. Product development spending rose to GBP 12.0 million from GBP 10.9 million, so the investment budget grew even as the top line shrank. Princess showed eight yachts at the Cannes Yachting Festival in September, a range wide enough to put the recovery on public display rather than confine it to a balance sheet, from the smallest current model through the new X90 flagship.

Chief executive Will Green framed the result in his own words: the company has moved from an adjusted EBITDA loss of GBP 24.5 million to a profit of GBP 35.9 million in just two years, which he credited to a relentless focus on how the business operates day to day rather than to any single new model or market tailwind. That framing matters for a yard that spent the previous two years explaining away losses. This time the explanation is a set of audited numbers, not a forecast.

How much of this is a real turnaround, and how much is just a low starting point?

The two-year swing runs from a GBP 24.5 million adjusted EBITDA loss in 2023, the year US private equity firm KPS Capital Partners completed its acquisition of a controlling stake in Princess, to a GBP 35.9 million profit in 2025, a GBP 60.4 million improvement.

KPS Capital Partners agreed the deal in February 2023 and completed it that March, taking controlling ownership of Princess Yachts Holdings Limited while existing shareholders retained a stake. The 2023 loss was the backdrop against which KPS took over, not a result of its ownership, which makes the scale of the reversal a genuine test of whether new capital and new management discipline changed anything, rather than a base-effect illusion built on comparing against an unusually bad year.

Two consecutive years of improvement, first the narrower 2024 loss and now a full-year profit, is a harder story to wave away than a single good quarter. Yards under private-equity ownership routinely promise operational discipline at the point of acquisition; fewer of them post audited numbers three years later that actually show it. Princess has now done that twice running.

Where did the extra profit come from, if sales fell?

The gain is margin, not volume. Revenue dropped by roughly 15 percent year on year, yet profit rose sharply, which the company attributes to improving gross profit per yacht through cost control rather than building and selling more boats.

Princess completed its F58 and V65 models during 2025 and introduced a C Class outboard-propulsion option, a narrower and more deliberate release slate than a yard chasing volume would run. The company's own account of the result leans on manufacturing efficiency and quality control across the business, language that points at fewer warranty comebacks and fewer discounted deliveries rather than a single cost-cutting swing.

For an owner, a yard that gets more profitable while building fewer boats is a different proposition to one that grows profit by growing volume. It suggests Princess prioritized getting each hull right and priced correctly over filling the order book at any margin, which is the version of a recovery an owner actually wants standing behind a multi-year build slot, rather than the version that shows up in a headline growth number and quietly cuts a corner per hull. Fewer hulls sold at a defended price also means fewer forced discounts late in a model's production run, the point in a cycle when a yard under volume pressure typically gives ground.

What is Princess actually spending the recovered profit on?

Princess lifted product development spending to GBP 12.0 million and is running its widest model pipeline in years: the new X90 flagship, a C48 Open due at October's Fort Lauderdale show, and the Odyssey brand aimed at the 30-metre-plus market from 2029, against a stated target of three new model launches a year.

The X90, built on a Hybrid Progressive-Planing hull Princess developed with naval architect Olesinski, premiered at the 2026 Cannes Yachting Festival after its first hull cleared sea trials off Plymouth in June. Yotters reported in July that the boat reached sea trials with 16 already on order, and by September, before the first hull had even left the yard, Princess had sold seven of them. That order pace, not just the press renders, is the real evidence the new flagship is landing with buyers.

The C48 Open, launching at Fort Lauderdale in October, extends the range downward with an outboard option that widens the buyer pool beyond traditional inboard customers. Odyssey, the superyacht-scale brand Princess unveiled as its comeback into 30-metre-plus builds, will not deliver its first hull until 2029, so it is the riskiest and slowest-paying part of the pipeline. Funding three fronts at once, entry-level, flagship and superyacht, out of a single year's recovered cash is an aggressive bet for a yard three years removed from a loss-making balance sheet.

What does this actually mean for someone who owns, or is about to order, a Princess?

The audited turnaround is real and backed by a private-equity owner with capital behind it, which is good news for warranty support and delivery reliability on a current order. The caution is that the underlying business is still thin against its own revenue, and the yard's biggest bet, the Odyssey 108 superyacht, will not prove itself for years.

On the strong side: two straight years of audited improvement, a controlling owner in KPS Capital Partners with capital to deploy rather than a founder-run yard stretched thin, rising product development spending in the same year profit recovered, and a new flagship, the X90, that is already selling ahead of its own deliveries. An order book the company itself describes as more heavily committed than the wider market, even with demand uncertain across the industry, backs that up - the kind of claim a yard only makes in public when the underlying numbers support it.

On the weak side: GBP 9.4 million of profit before tax against GBP 321.8 million of revenue is a margin of under 3 percent, thin for a business asking buyers to commit seven-figure deposits years in advance. Revenue itself fell by GBP 56.3 million, so the recovery has not yet been proven at higher volumes, only at lower ones. Princess has not published employment or dealer-network figures alongside the results, so the human and distribution cost of getting here is not visible in what the company chose to release. And the single biggest vote of confidence in its own future, the Odyssey 108, is a design an owner has to sign for now and wait until 2029 to see finished.