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http://investor.games-workshop.com/2012/08/29/directorpdmr-shareholding-7/#more-%27

The Company was informed that today Kevin Rountree, Chief Operating Officer of Games Workshop, acquired 5,000 ordinary shares of 5 pence each in the Company. These shares were acquired at a purchase price of 670 pence per share.

The aggregate holding of Mr Rountree has therefore increased to 11,315 Ordinary Shares, representing approximately 0.04 per cent. of the issued ordinary share capital of the Company.

So, (11,315 / 0.04) x 100 = 28,287,500 shares.

Each share is worth 670p, or £6.70.

Thus, this particular deal values the company at £189,526,250, which comes out as $299,944,243.

Thoughts? Is tha in line with what was thought/believed/known already? I can't remember from the last annualreport, tbh.

Current Market Capitalisation of Games Workshop is £210.067 million.


Whether this truly reflects the value of the company is up for debate.

Also other directors have been buying shares:

LONDON--Games Workshop Group PLC (GAW.LN) Wednesday said CEO Mark Wells acquired 630 ordinary shares at a purchase price of 633 pence per share.

MAIN FACTS:

-Wells' wife, Karina Wells, also bought 625 shares at a purchase price of 633 pence per share.

-This was to re-invest the company's recent dividend.

-Aggregate holding of Wells and his wife has therefore increased to 137,985 shares, representing 0.4% of the issued ordinary share capital of the company.

-Shares at 0958 GMT up 5 pence, or 0.80%, at 633 pence.

-Write to Tapan Panchal at tapan.panchal@dowjones.com

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 15, 2012 06:00 ET (10:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

LONDON--Games Workshop Group PLC (GAW.LN) Friday said Chairman Tom Kirby acquired 8,000 ordinary shares at a purchase price of 616 pence per share.

MAIN FACTS:

-Shares were bought through Kirby's SIPP.

-Aggregate holding of Kirby and his wife, has increased to 2.1 million shares, representing 6.75% of the issued ordinary share capital of the company.

-Shares on Friday closed at 613 pence.

-Write to Tapan Panchal at tapan.panchal@dowjones.com

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 10, 2012 11:54 ET (15:54 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Not sure if it's a good reflection of the company's worth in total.

But presumably in the next financial statement including 40K 6th and Dark Vengeance, combined with the looming Hobbit-Hype, numbers are not unlikely to look quite good.

Than the share-price will hitch up and, perhaps, it'll be a good time to dump a bit again.

That said 600-something shares isn't that massive an investment for executive level guys. What is that, GBP 5000,- each they put in (on top of what they had)? Hardly all-out buying there for top-management.

^yes, Likely all the insiders think that the share will go up that's why they buy now.

well, that or the exact opposite^^ and it's just for show because they know insider buying is public information and they want people to think their higher management is investing with full confidence in the company and risking their own wealth on the company's success.

Dumb question, but the stock price is in pence!? Every time I looked at it I thought it was in GBP so I am think 600+ GBP per share! holy crap! I feel kind of dumb now. I am American and I am used to prices being quoted in USD. Add in the USD to GBP conversion and I was really floored a the GW PLC share price.

Yep, it is quoted in pence not £

 Zweischneid wrote:
That said 600-something shares isn't that massive an investment for executive level guys. What is that, GBP 5000,- each they put in (on top of what they had)? Hardly all-out buying there for top-management.

It's no investment at all. They just re-invested the dividend that the shares they already owned gave them. Basically they didn't spend a penny, just got their dividend in shares instead of cash.

And Greenleafl, Insider trading is, by its very definition, NOT based on public information. If it is based on public information - and the market has had time to react to that information - it cannot be insider trading.

The main objective of all GW management decisions is to maximise dividends to shareholders for the next few years. Even if GW has to borrow money for that (happened in the past).
Why? Because the managers and the Chair own shares, simple as that. Tom Kirby triples his income by this. The Chief Operating Officer is just following this strategy. Investing in advertising and a growing customer base would reduce the managers income for the next few years, so is not done.

maybe we should do a kickstater and buy a piece of GW, hehe

 Kroothawk wrote:
The main objective of all GW management decisions is to maximise dividends to shareholders for the next few years. Even if GW has to borrow money for that (happened in the past).
Why? Because the managers and the Chair own shares, simple as that. Tom Kirby triples his income by this. The Chief Operating Officer is just following this strategy. Investing in advertising and a growing customer base would reduce the managers income for the next few years, so is not done.

As a shareholder, I approve this message. FWIW my share price has doubled in the last couple of years....

Not a bad idea - someone could create a new corporation and put something up on Indiegogo. Everyone who buys in gets put on the board of the company and you just run a polling system and forums to see what people want done with the leverage. Kind of like group buying power lol.

So rather than have a few thousand people with .0001% stake in the company you may be able to get up to a few %. Probably still not enough to make an impact on the companies direction but it sure would be cool

ok, here I thought a p at the end of a number was pence, not pounds


makes more sense not what the dividends were. I thought GW was a penny stock, heh. I was like, these poor bastards are getting pence as a dividend on shares?

Maybe if enough of us buy shares we can form a small but vocal voting block. Pipe dream but a fun pipe dream.

 Kroothawk wrote:
The main objective of all GW management decisions is to maximise dividends to shareholders for the next few years. Even if GW has to borrow money for that (happened in the past).
Why? Because the managers and the Chair own shares, simple as that. Tom Kirby triples his income by this. The Chief Operating Officer is just following this strategy. Investing in advertising and a growing customer base would reduce the managers income for the next few years, so is not done.

Yep. GW Management is committed to paying themselves and the institutional investors that snapped up much of their shares when they issued their profit warning. The mutual fund managers care about short term performance to look good on their quarterly reviews and GW upper management all have lavish retirements to fund. So long term customer retention and sales development? Nah. GW management won't reinvest any money they don't have to when they can divert it into their own pockets.

Cut costs, increase prices, declare a dividend the size of the profits (or borrow money and make one bigger than the profits). Rinse and repeat until you retire a millionaire (or in Kirby's case, a multi-millionaire). Long term health of the hobby? Who cares? Not GW upper management.

 frozenwastes wrote:

 Kroothawk wrote:
The main objective of all GW management decisions is to maximise dividends to shareholders for the next few years. Even if GW has to borrow money for that (happened in the past).
Why? Because the managers and the Chair own shares, simple as that. Tom Kirby triples his income by this. The Chief Operating Officer is just following this strategy. Investing in advertising and a growing customer base would reduce the managers income for the next few years, so is not done.

Yep. GW Management is committed to paying themselves and the institutional investors that snapped up much of their shares when they issued their profit warning. The mutual fund managers care about short term performance to look good on their quarterly reviews and GW upper management all have lavish retirements to fund. So long term customer retention and sales development? Nah. GW management won't reinvest any money they don't have to when they can divert it into their own pockets.

Cut costs, increase prices, declare a dividend the size of the profits (or borrow money and make one bigger than the profits). Rinse and repeat until you retire a millionaire (or in Kirby's case, a multi-millionaire). Long term health of the hobby? Who cares? Not GW upper management.

These two posts are a tad paranoid and quite simply do not reflect the fact that GW remunerate its senior managers in line with almost any other corporation in the UK.

The Chairman not holding stock would be a singular rarity here. No one would invest in a company where senior management do not invest their own money into the business they work for, it's part of the reason why this is public information. Giving employees additional stock is also common as is profit shares.

Tom Kirby was the leader in the management buyout of GW and subsequent floatation. He took the risk and has benefitted from this as GW has grown, I have absolutely no problem with this. Why work if not to benefit from it, this pretty much the basis of capitalism after all.

The "funds" that are suspiciously spoken of are pension funds that have held stock pretty much since the start. These types of companies tend to hold stock to extended periods in shares that hold their value and exhibit long term growth. Quite the opposite of the Girdon Geeko sharks you paint. I seem to recall that the chairman's preamble specially stated that GW was about sustainable growth and those looking for a quick buck would do well to go elsewhere.

To back this up there is a very low turnover of GW shares, people and organisations hold on to them.

So the idea that GWs managers are lining their pockets at the expense of the company is raisable. Why would a wealthy man damage the business he created to be slightly more wealthy at retirement? Who would destroy their life's work like that? Why would all the other investors go along with that when they aren't the ones retiring? These same posts that pop up all sound rather silly to me.

Finally how is it that some bloke in Canada and another in Germany have come across these vital nuggets of wrong doing when the combined scrutiny of journalists, numerous investors, HM Customs and Excise, the City of London have uncovered nothing out of the ordinary.

I agree price rises are crap (though I can understand why) and dropping focus from specialist games is frustrating but I can not understand any reason for continued claim that speak more of a need for anything to fill that void even fantasy.

Very well put post Notprop, and totally agree with all points, I have worked in a major investment bank (not as a trader though, just trader support) as well as running my own business's so I totally agree that all and any information would be disected thought very over analsyed by very knowledgable people before a customer posts stuff like this on the internet. Also as to fund managers only looking for quarterly results, sorry thats totally untrue, every fund is based on long term growth even when the shares drop they look to the future not cashing in at a loss just to pump the money elsewhere.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kroothawk wrote:
The main objective of all GW management decisions is to maximise dividends to shareholders for the next few years. Even if GW has to borrow money for that (happened in the past).
Why? Because the managers and the Chair own shares, simple as that. Tom Kirby triples his income by this. The Chief Operating Officer is just following this strategy. Investing in advertising and a growing customer base would reduce the managers income for the next few years, so is not done.

Have you looked at the share holdings of GW?, I dont think the COO is anywhere near a few percent of the company ownership, As notprop said the only reason why Kirby owns that much shares is because of the management buy out, he most probably put a money up, his reputation up and short term career prospects when he lead the management buy out and he made it work, not saying no one else could have but most other people would have failed in that task.

 Kroothawk wrote:
The main objective of all GW management decisions is to maximise dividends to shareholders for the next few years. Even if GW has to borrow money for that (happened in the past).

It's just amazing how much this supposed tidbit gets circulated around, given it's completely untrue.

Management NOT owning stock would be frowned upon - there was a huge turmoil when it turned out that Elop, Nokia's new CEO, did not own Nokia stock. He had to very quickly assure public that he plans to acquire signifant share, he just didn't get around doing that yet. And nobody sensible would invest in a company where management is in a selling spree - look at Facebook...

Fact is that Tom Kirby gets 1 mio pound per year by dividends, more than double his salary.
Fact is that GW gives to their shareholders more than profits, draining the company (sometimes even borrowing money to achieve that).
Fact is that GW is substantially losing sales and customers each year, losing their customer base and endangering the future of the company by that.
Fact is that GW does no advertising and raises the hurdle for entering the hobby each year by raising prices of introductory products more than inflation. Real introductory products are missing (low price, self contained like Space Hulk, Warhammer Quest) and the rest sold only in special stores, so normal customers don't see them.

 Kroothawk wrote:
Fact is that Tom Kirby gets 1 mio pound per year by dividends, more than double his salary.

Good for him, I guess.

 Kroothawk wrote:

Fact is that GW gives to their shareholders more than profits, draining the company (sometimes even borrowing money to achieve that).

For Guilliman's sake, just in how many threads you are going to make this claim despite repeatedly told that it's not true? This must be like fifth.

Please compare dividend values to earnings for the last decade of GW's financials. They have indeed borrowed to finance a dividend at least once.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
GW's stock could be a good buy if you can stay for the dividends for a few years and be nimble enough to get out before the profit warnings start coming again. It's hard to say if Hobbit sales have already been priced into the stock already though.

This is a microcap. If you're not familiar with investing in tiny companies, you may want to educate yourself on that before buying any GW stock.

 frozenwastes wrote:
Please compare dividend values to earnings for the last decade of GW's financials. They have indeed borrowed to finance a dividend at least once.

So when did it supposedly happen? Where can I access this information?

Just google GW investor relations. It's a lot to dig through. Basically you want to compare final net earnings (profit) and the size of the dividend each year. A good example is the year right before they cut the dividend. They expanded their debt and the dividend was larger than the net earnings.

 Kroothawk wrote:
Fact is that Tom Kirby gets 1 mio pound per year by dividends, more than double his salary.
Fact is that GW gives to their shareholders more than profits, draining the company (sometimes even borrowing money to achieve that).
Fact is that GW is substantially losing sales and customers each year, losing their customer base and endangering the future of the company by that.
Fact is that GW does no advertising and raises the hurdle for entering the hobby each year by raising prices of introductory products more than inflation. Real introductory products are missing (low price, self contained like Space Hulk, Warhammer Quest) and the rest sold only in special stores, so normal customers don't see them.

Crank up the Internationale and bring on the revolution comrade.

 frozenwastes wrote:
Just google GW investor relations. It's a lot to dig through. Basically you want to compare final net earnings (profit) and the size of the dividend each year. A good example is the year right before they cut the dividend. They expanded their debt and the dividend was larger than the net earnings.

I've read their financial reports over last few years and never seen them doing anything like that. Though, lots of time people misread the reports and claim that they do that. IIRC, GW is nearly debt-free.

Kroothawk wrote:Fact is that GW is substantially losing sales and customers each year, losing their customer base and endangering the future of the company by that.

Wasn't the average price hike 3% in the period covered by the last report? Revenue growth was more than that, at slightly higher than 6%. So sales have likely been going up, despite the recent crop of third party model sellers that should theoretically be cutting into GW's profits. Note also that this report doesn't cover 40k 6th edition, which likely generated quite a bit of revenue. The imminent release of The Hobbit is likely to only bolster GW further. I'm not sure if you were in the hobby back during the LotR boom, but suffice it to say that GW must be salivating at the recent news that The Hobbit will in fact be three films rather than two!

Kroothawk wrote:Fact is that GW does no advertising and raises the hurdle for entering the hobby each year by raising prices of introductory products more than inflation. Real introductory products are missing (low price, self contained like Space Hulk, Warhammer Quest) and the rest sold only in special stores, so normal customers don't see them.

I'm not so sure about that advertising thing. That aside, GW's IP is so popular that other organizations pay GW to use their product. GW's crossover products (FFG RPGs, Dawn of War II, Space Marine, etc.) are themselves quite popular and have brought many people into the hobby. I've met many people at my local store who got into 40k thanks to Dawn of War or Space Marine.

Backfire wrote:

So when did it supposedly happen? Where can I access this information?

FY 2006-2007. This was a rough time for GW -- they had a few years of declining sales and alarmingly declining profit. This was the year when they went through a ton of internal changes. They borrowed money to fund the purchase of a large amount of capital -- which helped GW reduce staff and increase pipeline bandwidth. In this same FY, they paid a dividend of a whopping 5p. In any case, GW managed to pay off all of their debt over the next couple of years, while continuing to pay strong dividends.

GW operates in a small, niche market. They are a (relatively) large, well-established company. Streamlining was important, as now they have significantly improved profitability.

And to those that argue that GW should advertise more -- why? GW is already the miniatures company, and anyone who is is interested in miniatures games (or wargames) already knows about GW and their products. Sure, advertising could bring a larger audience to wargaming, but they would likely pick a system that is cheaper and easier to learn.

Well pretty much every major company pays their directors more in bonuses than in actual pay

and dividends are the curse of a publicly listed company, ev even if kirby et al were not after them private and institutional investors would be

As for self contained 'introductory' games, yes it would be nice if they were more supportive.. but Dreadfleet was a bit of a disaster,

and I suspect they fear that if you bought say, Space Hulk why would you need to buy more ? It is self contained so it does not nessesarily bring in new players, and could be viewed as a bit of a dead end.

elrabin wrote:

Backfire wrote:

So when did it supposedly happen? Where can I access this information?

FY 2006-2007. This was a rough time for GW -- they had a few years of declining sales and alarmingly declining profit. This was the year when they went through a ton of internal changes. They borrowed money to fund the purchase of a large amount of capital -- which helped GW reduce staff and increase pipeline bandwidth. In this same FY, they paid a dividend of a whopping 5p. In any case, GW managed to pay off all of their debt over the next couple of years, while continuing to pay strong dividends.

Ok, I see.

I'm also not sure how or where GW supposedly should advertise. Should they put ad's on magazines? Which ones? Run them on TV?

Only thing which I agree is that GW would do well to have some sort of introductory game with widespread distribution. Like they had Space Crusade long time ago. License it to FFG if they don't want to do it by themselves.

GW do advertise, you've just made the mistake of assuming that since they're not aiming at you, then their advertizing doesn't exist.
Every GW store is advertising, every day.

You walk past on a Saturday or Sunday and what do you see?
A store full of screaming children, all busily playing/painting/chatting.
For the average gamer, that's a turn off. I know I don't like going into their stores any more.

But for Mummy and Daddy, what they see is something completely different:
They see free weekend daycare while they go shopping in peace, they see a big group of potential friends for their son/daughter, they see a creative, artistic hobby with tangible products that they can explain to relatives and be proud of (rather than "little jimmy is sooo good at the latest COD clone, and he swears like a trooper and degrades women till he's blue in the face! Bless him."), they see something that is likely to occupy their spawn while not taking up the TV and living room.

Fact is, GW does not aim any of its advertising at existing gamers, they've got by the short and curlies already, there is no point wasting money on you. And after 3 years, you've spent most of the money you'll ever spend on the hobby anyway. GW's business model is entirely focused at new customers, and more precisely, at new customers' parents and extended family. 3 years' worth of xmas and birthdays along with WD subscriptions, paint etc AND the word of mouth in local schools and clubs is all they need to keep going pretty much ad infinitum. The bonus sales they get when a “lifer” buys his 12th army are just that, bonus sales.

We wrote:
Dumb question, but the stock price is in pence!? Every time I looked at it I thought it was in GBP so I am think 600+ GBP per share! holy crap! I feel kind of dumb now. I am American and I am used to prices being quoted in USD. Add in the USD to GBP conversion and I was really floored a the GW PLC share price.

Don't feel bad,for a week or two I was wondering why the news is not talking about GW when it is killing both Apple and Amazon
Which it would be if it were pounds
And pounds and pence both start with a p how the heck is a yank like me gonna know that.