BryllCream wrote:
A sentence about a tiny part of games workshop's income, and within that a single aspect (rpgs) is omitted and you decide that means he's giving it the finger? Even when he, in the very next words, praises what ffg do?

 cincydooley wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
Interesting that he spent the vast bulk of the space talking about attitude for employees, how skill doesn't matter, and how doing it any other way would somehow be bad for morale.

It's a lot easier to teach someone a skill than to teach someone an attitude.

 Sigvatr wrote:

How about other gameslike Pokémon or role-playing games? (Who can remember them, now?)

I...I...I am out of words.

boyd wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
Interesting that he spent the vast bulk of the space talking about attitude for employees, how skill doesn't matter, and how doing it any other way would somehow be bad for morale.

It's a lot easier to teach someone a skill than to teach someone an attitude.

QFT.

 Kingsley wrote:
Which is more likely:

-GW is intentionally insulting FFGs RPG division
-GW doesn't know/care about RPGs

My money is on the latter.

Koppo wrote:

If the company make £1 in earnings for every share in issue and gives £2 in dividends for each share in issue then money out is greater than money in, so it must either come from some pot or be loaned from somewhere.

 Kroothawk wrote:
To summarize:

This financial year had:
- a new 40k edition with rules and starter box
- a new Hobbit edition with rules and starter box (costing double the price than its predecessor at release, same with miniatures)
- 6 new Codices/Armybooks from January to May (each costing double the price than its predecessor at release)
- Miniature releases with big boxes at ever rising prices (Eldar Titan outside of this financial year though)

Still, the total revenue only managed to stay flat adjusted for inflation. What options have they left to keep revenue flat next year? Another 40k Edition? 2 Codices per month? Quadrupling prices?

 loki old fart wrote:

boyd wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
Interesting that he spent the vast bulk of the space talking about attitude for employees, how skill doesn't matter, and how doing it any other way would somehow be bad for morale.

It's a lot easier to teach someone a skill than to teach someone an attitude.

QFT.

There's always natural ability, some people could sell you your own teeth.
Why not employ them, because if you don't. Your competitors will.

 azreal13 wrote:
Speaking as someone who used to have responsibility for training new staff, I'll take a cynical genius over an enthusiastic idiot every time.

Tom Kirby wrote:we recruit for attitude, not for skills.

 azreal13 wrote:
Speaking as someone who used to have responsibility for training new staff, I'll take a cynical genius over an enthusiastic idiot every time.

How about other games like Pokémon or role-playing games? (Who can remember them, now?)

cincydooley wrote:

 loki old fart wrote:
When its as easy to get a game of warmachine/fow etc, and 40k is not the obvious gateway into wargaming. The cracks are showing, the dam can burst.

I think this is a huge key, but is it really even close to being the case yet?

As to the attitude over skill thing: this really isn't that uncommon for large companies. Again, it's much easier to hone the skills of someone with a great attitude than it is to readjust the attitude of someone with great skills.

 Davylove21 wrote:
Well done GW. I can't remember them not posting profits. I don't like all the releases but with Space Marines getting a new book between now and the next report, I guarantee they post profits next time too.

Kroothawk wrote:
- Biggest increase was with BL and FW, the latter maybe because GW prices are now close to FW prices. Another segment reducing revenue from the core products. So core products also generate less revenue globally.

- Sales of Products are mostly done in the 1-2 months after release, that's why price increases are now concentrated on those without any consequences.

Future trend: Half the Codices (called supplements!) plus half the rulebooks (e.g. Death from the Sky) are mail order only to maximize profit and minimize effort and risk (English only). Supplements again cost about double previous supplement price in addition to reduced margins for FLGS, while its content is blown up to Codex page size with big sometimes recycled pics.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Flagship game is relaunched in this financial year (if I recall, 40k makes up around 70% of the total sales), prices go up, several armies are redone to successful review, there is a 'great demand' for certain ranges, so much so that they sell out, several items go direct sales only so pure profit, they close down failing stores, continue to remove experienced retail staff and replace them with new (which removes holiday pay, higher wages etc).

There should be a marked profit.

There is not.

There is no growth, no profit.

This is not a healthy report. The company is in a holding pattern.

 AgeOfEgos wrote:
Do I understand the chart correctly on page 6?

It shows 1st half/2nd half sales/operating profit over 5 years---it appears they had a larger increase in year to year operating profit during the first half (40k release I assume)--then a decrease from the previous year (First time since the LOTR bubble) in the 2nd half? It doesn't appear that's happened before this year (or since the LOTR bubble).

And is it accurate to say their revenue increase basically matched inflation--or like all accounting, is that too simplified to have significance?

Osbad wrote:
But it's the best we can do with the information we have, and lets' say that what it seems to be saying is that their slice of the pie is probably not growing, although they are squeezing more gravy from it yet again. (Sorry!! Horrible metaphor!!)

Koppo wrote:

Jack_Death wrote:

Koppo wrote:
Hang on..
Earnings per share of 51.5p (2012:46.8p)
Dividends per share declared in the year of 58p (2012: 63p)
Does that not mean that GW went in to debt and borrowed money (at interest) to pay dividends? Or did this come from some cash reserve?

Short answer. No.

Are you sure, the preamble was appended after I posted (or after I started to post anyway) and includes this

The fact that we have been paying a lot of surplus cash out as dividends hasn’t put them off! We’ll see what happens when we have a bad year and stop.

Which would indicate that the answer is "No and yes". That surplus was not generated this year as earning per share was less than dividends, neither was it generated last year as again earning per share were less than the dividends. So this surplus must be somewhere and must have been generated at least 2 years ago.
If the company make £1 in earnings for every share in issue and gives £2 in dividends for each share in issue then money out is greater than money in, so it must either come from some pot or be loaned from somewhere.
Unless I am missing something here (corporate finance is not my strong suit).

Osbad wrote:


Breaking down the Global Turnover into its constituent regions, we get a little more granularity and can see that US sales have overtaken the UK for the 2nd year running. UK and EU sales have flatlined in cash terms and ROW has increased. I don't have RPI figures to hand for outside of the UK, so I cant' make much comment on relevant discounting there, but discounting the UK figures alone, we can see that sales in real terms in the UK (which to be honest is all I am really interested in, being a UK resident, and interested on the impact in the UK scene as a gamer) are steadily declining.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

How about other games like Pokémon or role-playing games? (Who can remember them, now?)

Just who is he trying to kid?

By Harriet Dennys1:10PM BST 30 Jul 2013CommentsComment
Posting preliminary figures today, chairman and acting chief executive Tom Kirby uses his introduction to inform the market of his aim to “continue to make the best fantasy miniatures in the world and sell them at a profit”.
And how does he plan to do this? “We run a tight ship, and do our damnedest to get more sales,” he says. “Everything else is just whistling Dixie.”

Games Workshop, which makes and sells fantasy games such as Warhammer and Lord of the Rings and model figures with which to play them, posted pre-tax profits of £19.5m for the 53 weeks to June 3 2012. But royalty income from licences sold to computer games companies fell £2.5m to £1.0m.
“We expected a significant decline,” says Mr Kirby, who says the traditional computer games industry has been “changed utterly and permanently” by the arrival of smartphones and iPads.
“We switched as fast as we could,” he confesses. “But [we] were limited by the constraints of the deals we already had in place.”

Games Workshop may have adapted but Mr Kirby hasn't quite kept up referring to a one new product as "Warhammer Quest for iOS (Apple stuff). Buy it now! Good fun."
He also goes back to basics as runs through the company's performance. "Sales," Mr Kirby explains, "is all the money we take in and we quantify by counting it."
Such ideas are not "mysterious" he admits.

On the subject overheads he is equally pithy: "With overheads we try to have them not grow at all. Easy to say. Hard to do."
Mr Kirby also tells investors in the London-listed business to take next year’s capital investment numbers “with a pinch of salt”.
“We think it many be £9.3m,” he says, before referencing the 19th century German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke. “But remember that, as von Moltke said, ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy’.”
However, he says the biggest threat to the company is internal – its own staff. This is why Mr Kirby will only hire employees who understand that Games Workshop’s business ethic is modelled on inventor Thomas Edison’s methodology.
Mr Kirby explains the modus operandi: “After 10,000 attempts to make an incandescent lightbulb, [Edison] was asked about the 9,999 failures. ‘They weren’t failures, he said. I now know 9,999 ways it won’t work’.”

But if Games Workshop’s factory burns down, the company is “well insured”. In fact, says Mr Kirby, it could be back into full-scale production “within 12 months”.
Mr Kirby has a policy of never giving interviews or speaking to the press, leaving his “CEO’s Commentary” to do the talking for him.
He is part of a tradition of plain-speaking business leaders that includes Andrew Perloff, the outspoken chairman of Panther Securities, whose bi-annual “ramblings” have become more of a media event than the financial performance of his property investment company.
Although, of course, that may be the intention.