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notprop wrote:The goal of most companies and indeed the stated one of GW is sustainable growth combined with maintaining profitability: not maximising stock values or share payouts. The later are personal goals rather than corporate, of course the former do produce the later in the normal run of things.
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From what I've read, the bottom line is share payouts. IIRC, the current Chairman of GW "Tom Kirby" owns a ton of stock and is the primary shareholder. Every time he ups prices, he takes a huge dividend. GW's MO for a long time has been to maximize dividends regardless of the real condition of the company. It's not really about long-term profitability, hobbyists or any of that gak. It's about nice payouts for the investors.

Read more about it here:
http://theback40k.blogspot.com/2011/04/help-kirby-is-eating-our-hobby.html

It's bad for the hobby, but it's not a crazy as it seems. If things get really bad, Kirby and the other top stock owners will have already gotten a huge amount of $ via dividends. My guess (grain of salt here...) is that they know the company's IP is so valuable that in the worst case it can always be sold at breaking even or slight loss (still a large net gain after all those dividends) if they do manage to drive GW into the dust.

In the end the message is clear. If you like GW products bite the bullet and accept the price increases because at this point there is no reason to expect them to stop.

I place only a little bit more stock in GW published optimistic statements as the observations of a biased blogger. This is after all the same company that switched to a cheaper material and then raised the prices.

Note that I didn't say thier practices were manipulation, or illegal, or even necessarily unethical. I just think that when folks say "why the price raises" they should know that the answer largely atribuitable to "giving the stockholders dividends'.