Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Ouze wrote:
No, not yet.

But bound to happen at some time?

If I get an indication that GW are going under (and I don't mean visiting Australia ) then I'd be tempted to stock up on GW profits, hoards them for 3-5 years, and rake in the cash on ebay.

I'd advise others to do the same. Last year, when I sold some citadel stuff from the 1980s, the demand was crazy.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Is this the moment that GW's crops wither and die, its children piteous deaths?

Like most people, I haven't a clue when it comes to net profits, gross profits, currency flow etc etc

So, in one friendly sound bite, can anybody answer this question: is this GW's inevitable decline and demise?

Not even close.

It does appear to be the scenario that greater minds than mine predicted (costs have been cut, prices appear to have crossed, or be on the very edge of, the threshold of where the extra money raised is no longer offsetting the reduced sales, customer dissatisfaction has reached critical mass.)

Fundamentally, GW is still a profit making company, however they are on a downward trajectory, which carries the twin threat of turning them into a loss making company and making their public market value so low that a takeover becomes more and more plausible.

 Azreal13 wrote:

Backfire wrote:
[
Actually it sounds like it will be another boring, disappointing report all around - sales equating to weak late-2013 (which was supposed to be just a 'blip' and company was meant to turn around...) but not bad enough to vindicate those who are expecting the company to fold any minute.

What?! All none of them?!!

Don't you remember the last thread about this subject...?

Better than you if you think anyone was predicting the imminent demise of the company.

EDIT
anyone was plausibly predicting the imminent demise of the company.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
No, not yet.

But bound to happen at some time?

Doesn't seem likely. The company's cash position is too strong for any quick development in this regard. Also given the nature of their product, it would be quite unlikely there would be sudden mass exodus of customers.

However it is a bad sign if they can't improve from supposedly anomalously poor first half of last Financial Year. If the sales continue to decline, at some point they start making a loss, and someone larger will eventually take over (atm their stock is still too high for convenient takeover), possibly closes the Nottingham and moves production to China.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Better than you if you think anyone was predicting the imminent demise of the company.

EDIT
anyone was plausibly predicting the imminent demise of the company.

Well, the plausibility was not in the criteria, was it...?

The most pessimistic of the the more plausible predictions gave GW at least 2 years, give or take 6 months, so I don't expect this report to instantly kill them.

Unless they would do something incredibly stupid that will hurt them a lot, like TSR, but that is unlikely even for GW.

Backfire wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Better than you if you think anyone was predicting the imminent demise of the company.

EDIT
anyone was plausibly predicting the imminent demise of the company.

Well, the plausibility was not in the criteria, was it...?

It was in mine, if you give credence to every bat gak crazy, extreme, unsupported or speculative theory that crops up in this or any discussion about any subject you'll get bogged down pretty quickly.

Much better to simply dismiss them and move on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

shinr wrote:
The most pessimistic of the the more plausible predictions gave GW at least 2 years, give or take 6 months, so I don't expect this report to instantly kill them.

Unless they would do something incredibly stupid that will hurt them a lot, like TSR, but that is unlikely even for GW.

No, the danger is that they don't really be seem to be shifting their approach in a substantial enough manner, it's often been speculated that GW corporate don't really have any new ideas other than to do what they've always done, when if what we're seeing is a downward trend and not some random 18 month long blip they probably need to have a fairly fundamental rethink of their approach.

(Probably beginning with reaching out to their customers and trying to sell them what they want to buy, rather than what they assume they will buy)

Shut up all of you and buy more space marines.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
If I get an indication that GW are going under (and I don't mean visiting Australia ) then I'd be tempted to stock up on GW profits, hoards them for 3-5 years, and rake in the cash on ebay.

Publicly traded companies don't really "go under" in the way most people understand the term.

winterdyne wrote:
Shut up all of you and buy more space marines.

At £18 each like the new sanguinary priest, I think they are running out of enough people who can afford to buy enough space marines to make any real change in things.

I mean, their luxury brand sells two apothecaries for £21, the cheap plastic is £18 for one.

That sort of idiotic business practice is not the way to turn anything at all around.

How has the strong pound messed it up for GW? Wouldn't that be a benefit? Or has it been strong for ages, then gone bad a bit?

I feel like GW are on a decline to inevitable oblivion just by buying a new Tyranid army. Earlier Monstrous Creatures are around £24 at discount stores, the newer ones are about £33. There's no justification to it, just flapping arms like a drowning man.

I can't help but think that they could so easily pull it back in so many ways, but they're afraid of the gamble. Lord of the Rings went mainstream and with things like Big Bang Theory, LoL and Marvel, geek is chic right now. Just GW don't want to come to the party.

I hope they see sense. They're a bit Theoden before Gandalf sorts him out at the moment.

master sheol wrote:
Today ending value was 510 dropping down from 542.50 that is -5.90%

Can we start to say finally "THE SKY IS FALLING!!!"...???

Only if we can say, "OMG OMG OMG" if it goes up to 542.5 tomorrow

Analyst recommendation is Buy. And if you look at the daily chart, it goes up and down through the day. The number of shares that traded hands was teenie tiny. I mean, that closing price was set by a transaction for... drumroll.... 35 shares.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

NoggintheNog wrote:

winterdyne wrote:
Shut up all of you and buy more space marines.

At £18 each like the new sanguinary priest, I think they are running out of enough people who can afford to buy enough space marines to make any real change in things.

I mean, their luxury brand sells two apothecaries for £21, the cheap plastic is £18 for one.

That sort of idiotic business practice is not the way to turn anything at all around.

And yet, I just bought a bunch of solo PP models for $30-$65 -- like Borka and Bradigus. All nice solo hero models are expensive; if you don't want to pay it (or don't love the model), proxy in a cheap $2 kitbash.

Talys wrote:

master sheol wrote:
Today ending value was 510 dropping down from 542.50 that is -5.90%

Can we start to say finally "THE SKY IS FALLING!!!"...???

Only if we can say, "OMG OMG OMG" if it goes up to 542.5 tomorrow

Analyst recommendation is Buy. And if you look at the daily chart, it goes up and down through the day. The number of shares that traded hands was teenie tiny. I mean, that closing price was set by a transaction for... drumroll.... 35 shares.

Analyst recommendation was buy, IIRC you linked to that info last week, before the profits warning. But GAW trade at very low volumes as a rule, and small fluctuations throughout the day are totally normal - literally nothing to interpret out of that.

But honestly, those shareholders who were likely to run scared already scarpered in January, we are unlikely to see another cliff drop like we did then, but I wouldn't expect any significant rises for a but either.

 bubber wrote:
Down 30p at the mo - around 6.5%.
Got 44 shares myself so this is bad news for me :(
However I usually get around £12 dividend a year which, for a £200 investment, is still pretty good esp compared to savings accounts in the UK.

wow... thats actually a really good dividend

considering the over all economic troubles,

the state of the economy is quite simply, that no one is buying anything (at least not buying enough)


oil prices have crashed, other areas in the world economy have been doing poorly as well. I would expect high l=priced luxury goods to not perform as well and can see a fair amount of volatility in this kind of climate, especially exports like GW when currency prices are all over the place.

so, that GW is making "less profit" or its shares went down 6% isnt the best news for them, its still profit at the end of the day, so long as they are in the black im not too worried about them dying off.

If there's one thing GW is good at, it's paying out dividends. You might almost think that's their goal...

The blame game should be amusing. Anything but GW themselves, of course.

 Olgerth Istaarn wrote:
The blame game should be amusing. Anything but GW themselves, of course.

What will be really amusing is if we go back into the last 10 mid/full year financial reports, pull out all of the blame game language, and line it up chronologically.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Everything's totally in line with board expectations. Yep, truly:

You've been waiting six months to post that, haven't you?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I find it completely unsurprising that pumping out a poorly thought out cash grab edition only two years after the previous one didn't have a stellar effect on sales. The removal of utility from the codex books along with an almost doubling of codex price PLUS offering the content that used to be included as a separate cash grab digital or physical purchase like dataslates or some of the previous codex supplements (with no thought paid to game balance of course!) doesn't seemed to have helped either. It's almost like the dvd reboxing trend mixed with wannabe microtransactions that they've adopted into the tabletop wargame production strategy isn't bringing enough new players on board or keeping existing ones to any degree noticeable in the only metric they care about (profits). Shocking!

It's almost as if lots of gamers are forging their own narrative with their wallets in response to the new "freedom" GW is giving gamers.

Down 30p at the mo - around 6.5%.
Got 44 shares myself so this is bad news for me :(
However I usually get around £12 dividend a year which, for a £200 investment, is still pretty good esp compared to savings accounts in the UK.

It's not bad, you can get a lot better if you look around though.

I also wouldn't even consider buying shares in GW even if they were on the rise, it's essentially supporting their current policies and the state of the company.

 Davylove21 wrote:


I hope they see sense. They're a bit Theoden before Gandalf sorts him out at the moment.

Comment of the thread so far!

It amazes me how people are amazed that a company presents itself in a favorable way even when having trouble.

Point me to a company the size of GW that blatantly writes "we are doing bad." -in their report. Ofcourse they use terms like "according to expectations." All companies do this, I wonder why some make different rules for GW.

 RunicFIN wrote:
It amazes me how people are amazed that a company presents itself in a favorable way even when having trouble.

Point me to a company the size of GW that blatantly writes "we are doing bad." -in their report. Ofcourse they use terms like "according to expectations." All companies do this, I wonder why some make different rules for GW.

It's equally stupid whoever's doing it. It is equally deserving of mockery whoever is doing it.

Right now, the only company relevant to the content of this forum is GW, and they're doing it.

 RunicFIN wrote:
It amazes me how people are amazed that a company presents itself in a favorable way even when having trouble.

Point me to a company the size of GW that blatantly writes "we are doing bad." -in their report. Ofcourse they use terms like "according to expectations." All companies do this, I wonder why some make different rules for GW.

I think it's the way GW presents itself in light of things not going positively.

Things like "Our crops will wither, etc. etc." makes for an entertaining show of it.

 Azreal13 wrote:
It's equally stupid whoever's doing it. It is equally deserving of mockery whoever is doing it.

Right now, the only company relevant to the content of this forum is GW, and they're doing it.

If you had a company ( oh wait, you do ) and it would be doing bad, would you advertise it blatantly? Yeah, didn´t think so.

Of course not!

But if I was papering over the cracks I wouldn't expect people not to take the piss out of blatant hoop jumping, knot tying, prevarication, finger pointing or smoke blowing either.

Just because it's the done thing, it doesn't make it not stupid.

But then, I've pretty much already said that and you didn't grasp it.

 RunicFIN wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
It's equally stupid whoever's doing it. It is equally deserving of mockery whoever is doing it.

Right now, the only company relevant to the content of this forum is GW, and they're doing it.

If you had a company ( oh wait, you do ) and it would be doing bad, would you advertise it blatantly? Yeah, didn´t think so.

There's a difference between the board putting out a financial statement that amounts to "WOE, WOE, WOOOOEEEE! Gird your loins, my children, for all is WOOOOOEEEEEE!" and acknowledging that things aren't going so well and you're going to take steps to address it. Nobody is expecting Kirby to actually admit he's a moron, but at some point they're going to have to stop blaming everyone and everything else and actually lay out how the company is going to proceed.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Of course not!

But if I was papering over the cracks I wouldn't expect people not to take the piss out of blatant hoop jumping, knot tying, prevarication, finger pointing or smoke blowing either.

Just because it's the done thing, it doesn't make it not stupid.

But then, I've pretty much already said that and you didn't grasp it.

Except in this case, actually, you didn´t grasp what I said. Ofcourse it´s stupid. The mind boggling part is how some don´t see how commoplace it is.

 Yodhrin wrote:
There's a difference between the board putting out a financial statement that amounts to "WOE, WOE, WOOOOEEEE! Gird your loins, my children, for all is WOOOOOEEEEEE!" and acknowledging that things aren't going so well and you're going to take steps to address it. Nobody is expecting Kirby to actually admit he's a moron, but at some point they're going to have to stop blaming everyone and everything else and actually lay out how the company is going to proceed.

To be honest there´s hundreds of other companies with reports that are worded just like GW´s. Like I said, it´s common, everyday stuff. I guess the people who have the energy to be amazed about it haven´t read too many reports outside GW and are thinking they are something special. They´re not.

 RunicFIN wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Of course not!

But if I was papering over the cracks I wouldn't expect people not to take the piss out of blatant hoop jumping, knot tying, prevarication, finger pointing or smoke blowing either.

Just because it's the done thing, it doesn't make it not stupid.

But then, I've pretty much already said that and you didn't grasp it.

Except in this case, actually, you didn´t grasp what I said. Ofcourse it´s stupid. The mind boggling part is how some don´t see how commoplace it is

I fail to see the relevance to what you're saying other than to try and lash out at people who are treating the excuse making with the derision it deserves. If something stupid happens all the time, is it magically less stupid?

No.

So what's your point. That some people are reacting to this in a derisory manner without being aware that equally stupid things happen with other companies that aren't GW on a regular basis?

There's absolutely no substance to what you're saying at all.

Blatantly admitting to doing poorly?

Something like this?

This year has seen both sales and profits decline. The decline in sales was expected, but it has been hard to project accurately the amount. Most of the decline is due to the trading cycles I spoke about last year – partly product cycles and partly channel problems. Some of it, though, is our own fault. During the good times, when life is easy, it’s possible to forget the good habits that earned those good times. All of us forgot some of those good habits, and some of us forgot all of them.

Guess which company.

 RunicFIN wrote:
To be honest there´s hundreds of other companies with reports that are worded just like GW´s. Like I said, it´s common, everyday stuff. I guess the people who have the energy to be amazed about it haven´t read too many reports outside GW and are thinking they are something special. They´re not.

To be honest, no, no there's not.

Games Workshop has had a really good year.
If your measure of 'good' is the current financial year's numbers, you may not agree. But if your measure is the long-term survivability of a
great cash generating business that still has a lot of potential growth, then you will agree.

Because no one seems able to grasp the essential simplicity of what we do there has always been the search for the Achilles heel, the one
thing that Kirby and his cronies have overlooked. These are legion.

Kirby's rambling 'plain-speaking' (idiotic?) preambles are so characteristically unusual that it has been newsworthy.

 Azreal13 wrote:

I fail to see the relevance to what you're saying other than to try and lash out at people who are treating the excuse making with the derision it deserves.

That´s just an opinion of yours, not an universal truth, sorry. Nice pseudointellectual counter-argument there, however finding commonplace things somehow extraordinary I find a bit stupid aswell. And that also, is an opinion.

 Thud wrote:

This year has seen both sales and profits decline. The decline in sales was expected, but it has been hard to project accurately the amount. Most of the decline is due to the trading cycles I spoke about last year – partly product cycles and partly channel problems. Some of it, though, is our own fault. During the good times, when life is easy, it’s possible to forget the good habits that earned those good times. All of us forgot some of those good habits, and some of us forgot all of them.

Guess which company.

I fail to see what purpose this serves as the point was that other companies act like GW do. Just because there are some that don´t doesn´t make it any less so, unless someone argumented that no company admits failure. Which I atleast did not.

weeble1000 wrote:
To be honest, no, no there's not.

I´ll give you the benefit of doubt and just presume you understood perfectly what I was talking about. So yeah, there are, and there always will be.