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dereksatkinson wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
No mate, intentionally or not, what you were doing in the other thread was dismissing anyone's opinion if it wasn't yours and dismissing evidence if it didn't support your position.

I'm not saying everyone who ever posted an opinion about GW's business practices is some sort of business genius, but not every one is clueless either.

Umm no. I kept pointing out that you guys were making logic leaps with your assessment of the company's earnings that someone who was even remotely familiar with a balance sheet/income statement wouldn't make. Things that I understood before even taking my first non-paid internship. For example... having to explain that interest rates impact stock prices isn't something that should be controversial. Nor should the idea that if we start to see the economy weaken, it will negatively impact retail. Yet I see it being argued.

And yet you are forgetting to account the decrease in sales, the decrease in profits and especially the lack of dividends in your explanations of why the stock plummeted and are instead hand waving it all away as a result of a weakening economy. And you still haven't explained how that same weakening economy (that actually isn't weakening, all economic indicators in Europe are rising), doesn't also have the same impact on GW's main competitors, on KS or even on the tabletop gaming industry at large since all of those have reported growth...

At this point I wouldn't trust you to manage my sons allowance, let alone any type of investment fund.

I guessing we should all just buy gold.

Or, we should have about 10 or 15 years ago.

[MOD EDIT - IMAGE ONLY posts are considered "Spam". Also, make sure that any images you do post don't contain expletives. - Alpharius]

PhantomViper wrote:
And yet you are forgetting to account the decrease in sales, the decrease in profits and especially the lack of dividends in your explanations of why the stock plummeted and are instead hand waving it all away as a result of a weakening economy. And you still haven't explained how that same weakening economy (that actually isn't weakening, all economic indicators in Europe are rising), doesn't also have the same impact on GW's main competitors, on KS or even on the tabletop gaming industry at large since all of those have reported growth...

At this point I wouldn't trust you to manage my sons allowance, let alone any type of investment fund.

I'm giving reasons for the sales slump that actually go inline with the numbers we are seeing. It's not something unique to GW and I have no idea where you are getting the idea Europe is improving. You guys are having bank failures and bailouts left and right. Oh the government numbers right... We will see how long this charade lasts.

 Alpharius wrote:
I guessing we should all just buy gold.

Or, we should have about 10 or 15 years ago.

I did and was pretty vocal about it. back on my old screen name (derekatkinson) I posted about buying gold in 2006 here on dakka and before that oil price in around 04.. I even said back in 06 that i thought the economy was in trouble. Took a year for it to finally start to roll over but when it did, it wiped out many people. What landed me my current job was calling the gold move correctly along with the real estate bubble and the banking crisis we had in the states. I'm not a novice and I have a public track record to prove it. I'm not perma bull or perma bear in anything. When things get to an extreme, I place my bets. I don't care if i'm too early and look like fool at that time.

dereksatkinson wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
And yet you are forgetting to account the decrease in sales, the decrease in profits and especially the lack of dividends in your explanations of why the stock plummeted and are instead hand waving it all away as a result of a weakening economy. And you still haven't explained how that same weakening economy (that actually isn't weakening, all economic indicators in Europe are rising), doesn't also have the same impact on GW's main competitors, on KS or even on the tabletop gaming industry at large since all of those have reported growth...

At this point I wouldn't trust you to manage my sons allowance, let alone any type of investment fund.

I'm giving reasons for the sales slump that actually go inline with the numbers we are seeing. It's not something unique to GW and I have no idea where you are getting the idea Europe is improving. You guys are having bank failures and bailouts left and right. Oh the government numbers right... We will see how long this charade lasts.

Not that I've noticed. Spain and Greece have had further problems and have needed assistance, but we've not had any bank failures lately and luxury spending is starting to increase again. We're by no stretch of the imagination back to pre-recession levels, but by all accounts all of GW's direct competition is doing pretty well, and we're in the middle of a gaming renaissance, so the problem isn't the market. Of course GW is the only one with the huge retail network, so a shift from retail->online sales would hurt them more but we're also seeing that the growth in online and indy retailers isn't coming from GW (reflected in GW's summary - sales from indies are down), and that less people are playing GW games (reflected by GW's sales decline).

To say GW is fine is disingenuous at best. They aren't completely doomed, but they've clearly got problems.

Are we keeping track of how many times GW share price threads are being dragged off topic yet? We should have a scoreboard.

Herzlos wrote:

Not that I've noticed. Spain and Greece have had further problems and have needed assistance, but we've not had any bank failures lately and luxury spending is starting to increase again. We're by no stretch of the imagination back to pre-recession levels, but by all accounts all of GW's direct competition is doing pretty well, and we're in the middle of a gaming renaissance, so the problem isn't the market. Of course GW is the only one with the huge retail network, so a shift from retail->online sales would hurt them more but we're also seeing that the growth in online and indy retailers isn't coming from GW (reflected in GW's summary - sales from indies are down), and that less people are playing GW games (reflected by GW's sales decline).

To say GW is fine is disingenuous at best. They aren't completely doomed, but they've clearly got problems.

I didn't say that they were fine. The discussion was about their stock price and I think it's moving for other reasons.

Herzlos wrote:

dereksatkinson wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
And yet you are forgetting to account the decrease in sales, the decrease in profits and especially the lack of dividends in your explanations of why the stock plummeted and are instead hand waving it all away as a result of a weakening economy. And you still haven't explained how that same weakening economy (that actually isn't weakening, all economic indicators in Europe are rising), doesn't also have the same impact on GW's main competitors, on KS or even on the tabletop gaming industry at large since all of those have reported growth...

At this point I wouldn't trust you to manage my sons allowance, let alone any type of investment fund.

I'm giving reasons for the sales slump that actually go inline with the numbers we are seeing. It's not something unique to GW and I have no idea where you are getting the idea Europe is improving. You guys are having bank failures and bailouts left and right. Oh the government numbers right... We will see how long this charade lasts.

Not that I've noticed. Spain and Greece have had further problems and have needed assistance, but we've not had any bank failures lately and luxury spending is starting to increase again. We're by no stretch of the imagination back to pre-recession levels, but by all accounts all of GW's direct competition is doing pretty well, and we're in the middle of a gaming renaissance, so the problem isn't the market. Of course GW is the only one with the huge retail network, so a shift from retail->online sales would hurt them more but we're also seeing that the growth in online and indy retailers isn't coming from GW (reflected in GW's summary - sales from indies are down), and that less people are playing GW games (reflected by GW's sales decline).

To say GW is fine is disingenuous at best. They aren't completely doomed, but they've clearly got problems.

Yet GW are making a massive fanfare about their new store model, and how they're going to keep investing in it, despite citing the changeover as the (only) underlying reason for the drop off.

Rings alarm bells all of its own.

 pretre wrote:
Are we keeping track of how many times GW share price threads are being dragged off topic yet? We should have a scoreboard.

Well... the discussion is about why the stock dropped. Explained that retail in general isn't doing so hot and alot of retailers are closing stores, firing people etc. is staying on topic


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:
Yet GW are making a massive fanfare about their new store model, and how they're going to keep investing in it, despite citing the changeover as the (only) underlying reason for the drop off.

Rings alarm bells all of its own.

Well.. it's a cost cutting measure. Lots of companies are cutting back on brick and mortar stores and keeping skeleton staffs.

In all honesty, having more employees at the store wouldn't be making a meaningful impact on sales so it makes sense. No sense in having a higher burn rate.

I think that depends on the store and the number of staff we're talking about. In a smaller store going from 3 to 4 employees might not make much difference, but going from 1-2 might.

With 1 staff member you have to make all sorts of customer unfriendly compromises:
* Stores need to shut for a lunch or toilet break. Disastrous if you've got people in the store at the time
* Stores need to shut at least twice a week
* Stores are often shut on sick days or holidays
* They can't do anything at all when a customer comes in. Disastrous if your customer interactions can be quite long (game/panting demo's, for instance).
** That means you have to stop the demo to deal with any other customers, and you can't get any shop work done when there are customers.

What GW is doing makes sense for short-interaction commodity stores like newsagents - customers are only taking a few seconds of your time, and even they tend to work in shifts or have a second member of staff back of house.

Herzlos wrote:
I think that depends on the store and the number of staff we're talking about. In a smaller store going from 3 to 4 employees might not make much difference, but going from 1-2 might.

With 1 staff member you have to make all sorts of customer unfriendly compromises:
* Stores need to shut for a lunch or toilet break. Disastrous if you've got people in the store at the time
* Stores need to shut at least twice a week
* Stores are often shut on sick days or holidays
* They can't do anything at all when a customer comes in. Disastrous if your customer interactions can be quite long (game/panting demo's, for instance).
** That means you have to stop the demo to deal with any other customers, and you can't get any shop work done when there are customers.

What GW is doing makes sense for short-interaction commodity stores like newsagents - customers are only taking a few seconds of your time, and even they tend to work in shifts or have a second member of staff back of house.

Lots of good points there.

Personally I think GW need to do the opposite of what they are doing now, instead of 100 one man stores eating into their bottom line and trying to churn through new blood they should drop down 1 battle bunker with 4 or 5 staff so that it can be open every day and late thurdsay through saturday for gaming. Get a real community going around the store, lots of people in there everyday painting, playing and generally hanging around talking Warhammer.

dereksatkinson wrote:Well.. it's a cost cutting measure. Lots of companies are cutting back on brick and mortar stores and keeping skeleton staffs.

I wouldn't enter a store with skeleton staff

Herzlos wrote:Disastrous if your customer interactions can be quite long (game/panting demo's, for instance).

Maybe turning down temperature in the store would help

Touche`!

 azreal13 wrote:

 MadCowCrazy wrote:
I've been wondering this for a while, how many shares are there and what is the price of each?

If you add them all up together does that mean you get how much GW is worth? If someone were to buy every single share would that mean they would own the company and could do whatever they wanted with it?

Exactly right.

Just over 31m shares in circulation, giving a valuation of ~£160m. You'd need a lot more than that to buy them outright, as you'd drive the price up as you were purchasing them, and eventually (27% rings a bell?) have to make an offer to buy the whole shebang, and would have to offer over market value if you wanted people to actually sell you their stock.

You could probably pick up enough to make a big noise at the AGM and be listened to for around £20m I reckon. Or just hold tight and see what happens of the next set of financials are as nasty a shock to the market as these apparently were.

Or you buy 51% of the company and exert your control over management. If you have the majority interest in the company unless you're deliberately screwing the other shareholders out of money or freezing them in their investment then you could technically do what you want in terms of operations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:

 Spazz wrote:
I'm pretty sure that you would only have to own 51% of the total stock to gain control of the company.

Correct, but there is a regulation that obliges you to try and buy the whole company once your stake reaches a certain percentage, you're not compelled to be successful, and if you gain 51% or more you will essentially control the organisation, but you must make the effort.

Not true the other owners would be listed on the financial statements as a minority interest. If you owned other ventures you would be required to consolidate the new company into your existing portfolio. Unless you were to delist from the exchange, then you may have to purchase the entire company.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Management at GW isn't poor, they have been able to go debt free and that is a very admirable thing. No debt allows them to take more risk. They don't have debt/ interest payments to plan for. The reason for the large drop in price is due to not paying dividends. They did not meet the expectations of their investors.

boyd wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:

 Spazz wrote:
I'm pretty sure that you would only have to own 51% of the total stock to gain control of the company.

Correct, but there is a regulation that obliges you to try and buy the whole company once your stake reaches a certain percentage, you're not compelled to be successful, and if you gain 51% or more you will essentially control the organisation, but you must make the effort.

Not true the other owners would be listed on the financial statements as a minority interest. If you owned other ventures you would be required to consolidate the new company into your existing portfolio. Unless you were to delist from the exchange, then you may have to purchase the entire company.

I believe that would depend where the company is listed, if it is on the LSE then azrael is right.

If it's listed anywhere else then I have no idea.

When a person or group acquires interests in shares carrying 30% or more of the voting rights of a company, they must make a cash offer to all other shareholders at the highest price paid in the 12 months before the offer was announced (30% of the voting rights of a company is treated by the Code as the level at which effective control is obtained).

Well I guess UK differs from US law in that regard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

boyd wrote:

Management at GW isn't poor, they have been able to go debt free and that is a very admirable thing. No debt allows them to take more risk. They don't have debt/ interest payments to plan for. The reason for the large drop in price is due to not paying dividends. They did not meet the expectations of their investors.

That's true, now you need to look at why they didn't pay a dividend, and then you notice the substantial drop in revenue and profit with no real plausible reason offered to account for it, and no advance warning in the previous statement to suggest it was actually planned.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Captain Blood wrote:

boyd wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:

 Spazz wrote:
I'm pretty sure that you would only have to own 51% of the total stock to gain control of the company.

Correct, but there is a regulation that obliges you to try and buy the whole company once your stake reaches a certain percentage, you're not compelled to be successful, and if you gain 51% or more you will essentially control the organisation, but you must make the effort.

Not true the other owners would be listed on the financial statements as a minority interest. If you owned other ventures you would be required to consolidate the new company into your existing portfolio. Unless you were to delist from the exchange, then you may have to purchase the entire company.

I believe that would depend where the company is listed, if it is on the LSE then azrael is right.

If it's listed anywhere else then I have no idea.

GW are listed in the LSE, so they come under UK trading laws and financial regs.

boyd wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Management at GW isn't poor, they have been able to go debt free and that is a very admirable thing. No debt allows them to take more risk. They don't have debt/ interest payments to plan for. The reason for the large drop in price is due to not paying dividends. They did not meet the expectations of their investors.

Except that GW doesn't really take many risks. Kirby is incredibly risk adverse to the point if stagnating the company.

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
Tin foil hat time.

Gw forcing its staff to buy shares to try and drive the value of high lord Kirby's retirement plan up?

*Removes Tim foil hat, now has tinfoil hat hair*

A more legitimate variant might be GW preparing for a low key buy back.

Too many shares belong to folks that really do not know what GW does, other than send out dividends.

The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

Too many shares belong to folks that really do not know what GW does, other than send out dividends.

And how does having GW management owning the shares rectify that situation!?



Edit: sounded a bit confrontational; not having a go, merely expressing my total lack of faith that any of GW upper management would even recognise their own product in a blind taste test.

Herzlos wrote:
I think that depends on the store and the number of staff we're talking about. In a smaller store going from 3 to 4 employees might not make much difference, but going from 1-2 might.

With 1 staff member you have to make all sorts of customer unfriendly compromises:
* Stores need to shut for a lunch or toilet break. Disastrous if you've got people in the store at the time
* Stores need to shut at least twice a week
* Stores are often shut on sick days or holidays
* They can't do anything at all when a customer comes in. Disastrous if your customer interactions can be quite long (game/panting demo's, for instance).
** That means you have to stop the demo to deal with any other customers, and you can't get any shop work done when there are customers.

What GW is doing makes sense for short-interaction commodity stores like newsagents - customers are only taking a few seconds of your time, and even they tend to work in shifts or have a second member of staff back of house.

Yeah, I like the manager at the local GW store, he's a good bloke. But in the past couple of months I've gone there, oh, maybe about 6 or 7 times. Once it was shut because it has weird hours I wasn't aware of, another time it was closed with a "back in 10 minutes" sign, another time I wanted to buy something and had to wait for agggggges because there were 2 other customers in the store starting a new army which he was helping first.

After those experiences, I increasingly find myself going to the non-GW store which is 10 minutes drive further away simply because I know the shop will a) be open, b) have someone to serve me.

Perhaps they need a few of these?



Actually, I intended this to be a bit facetious, but honestly? Thinking about it, it wouldn't be the worst idea!

 Jadenim wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

Too many shares belong to folks that really do not know what GW does, other than send out dividends.

And how does having GW management owning the shares rectify that situation!?



Edit: sounded a bit confrontational; not having a go, merely expressing my total lack of faith that any of GW upper management would even recognise their own product in a blind taste test.

Heh, went to snarl back at you, and found that you had edited between the time that I first saw the post and now.

Thank you!

I was actually thinking that some the GW management might be taking the opportunity to buy in, rather than that they might have manipulated the market to do so.

Increasing the leverage of those few.



I... actually suspect that some of the brass does have a clue - but that the tarnish on top of the brass does not.

I think that the GW stock has been overvalued for a time - and that this is more by way of a correction than an actual crash. Just a pretty big correction.

I suspect that GW has paid dividends in years where they really were not in a position to do so without damage.

Not as bad as taking out a loan to pay dividends, but....

Is there any comparison of how the Forge World subsidiary is doing vs the main line of GW?

It seems to me that I am seeing more 3rd party models on the table, fewer GW models, but that folks are still buying FW models at the same slow rate, and holding on to the models.

There are any number of possible reasons, including local market, but I do wonder whether it is more widespread.

I wonder in part because I thought for some time that Pathfinder outselling D&D 4e was:
a.) just my personal bias,
then
b.) just the local market,
only to discover that it was
c.) just Pathfinder outselling 4e across the board....

And, like the way I felt about 4e, I am much more worried about how GW failing might affect third party and after market companies than caring about GW itself.

The Auld Grump

@ The Auld Grump; You're welcome!

As for your points about Forgeworld, I can only offer my opinion and feelings, which is wholly subjective, but to me there are three things about FW that encourage me to buy from them:

1) Their miniatures are generally awesome. I look through the FW website and just drool. Unfortunately a lot of recent GW releases haven't done that for me. For example I find the Tau flyers clunky and "meh", which is ridiculous when they could've just copied the Barracuda/Tigershark aesthetic;

2) FW prices have only had minimal increases in the past few years. Time was that I'd look at their website and think "oh, that is awesome, but I can buy three things for the same price from my FLGS", now it's more like "wow, that's basically the same price as GW and I'd only be able yo get it direct only, so add to cart";

3) FW still give at least the impression that they're run by gamers for gamers. The open days, HH weekenders, sneak peaks in the magazines and blogs, making of videos all seem to indicate a group of very creative individuals who gave a passion for their work.

IMHO this all goes back to your original statement; I may have doubts about GW upper management, but I am certain that FW management do understand their customer base, mainly because they are from the customer base. At times it feels like FW operate on a real "rule of cool" basis; if they feel a direction isn't going to make their fans cheer and gasp, then they don't go that way.

weeble1000 wrote:
Except that GW doesn't really take many risks. Kirby is incredibly risk adverse to the point if stagnating the company.

That is questionable. Kirby's strategy has a very high risk of failure, and it usually fails year after year. Like closing stores and reducing sales staff and opening hours when you want to sell more. Like closing HQs and reducing translation staff when you want to increase sales in those countries. Like raising the hurdle for beginners when you need new customers. Like insisting on the no-marketing-policy for years. Like hiring for Yes-Sir-attitude instead of skills.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

I suspect that GW has paid dividends in years where they really were not in a position to do so without damage.

Not as bad as taking out a loan to pay dividends, but....

I seem to remember GW did take a loan out to pay dividends a few years back and was then reporting, perhaps a couple of years ago, great news, as they had repaid it?

In the last annual report, Kirby said that GW is doing do damn well, that they can't think of any reasonable way to spend the money than give it to shareholders like him.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Too many shares belong to folks that really do not know what GW does, other than send out dividends.

That's not that big a deal, Grump. After all, the guy running the company doesn't really know what GW does either.

I just want them to hit the crapper already, stop wrecking my game so my company can buy them and fix it. I would be at the CEO's desk with an entire box of crayons detailing GW being a miserable sod and probable fixes that would end up with a thriving company.

I joke with the crayons, I would use MSpaint to create all of my graphs. We have to keep it professional after all. Until they fail or they break the game so badly that they have managed to suck all of the fun from it I will continue to buy in tiny amounts or in realist trades.

What I am attempting to gather is how the company is still stable even with a horrible fantasy edition that requires ever larger armies and a bloated 40k line that is bursting at the seams with useless rules and pointless rule books in the name of cheese.

 Kroothawk wrote:

This is interesting. I don't suppose anyone has a similar graph to show shareprices over the past year or five years have they?

Just type gaw.l into google