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My position on the larger macro-economic factors is that they played a part in allowing the negative financial report and lack of dividend to have as much impact as it did. People full of hope and exuberance accept bad news far less easily in terms of actually acting on it in the stock market than people who have been struggling for 6+ years of economic uncertainty.

It might also be a worthwhile endeavor to take a look at GW's chart and see just how long the stock can move sideways after a big move up or down. It's a long, long time. So watching the stock so you don't miss something interesting might be a boring exercise. If you own GW stock, then you should already have an exit plan.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

dereksatkinson wrote:
There are some very basic things i've corrected here. Hell.. Skkipper came onto this thread and flat out told everyone I made him 100k based on my advice. So now you are going to sit here and call me incompetent? lol

Anecdotal evidence? I don't know this Skkipper so I have no idea whether he made 100K from your advice or not.

I could claim to have taught Stephen Hawking everything he knows, which would obviously mean I am the greatest theoretical physicist alive today. Just because I say it doesn't make it true.

Page 12. Wasn't hard to find, I just went to Derek's profile > checked his friends list > visited Skkippers profile > checked his posts.

 skkipper wrote:

 FacelessMage wrote:
In the grim darkness of stock information there is only war.

the difference is I have made $100k on talking with Derek and he is a professional in the industry. I currently own $50k in GW. Am I down? Yes. Am I selling? No. Their price will come up. Buy GW now and you will have more money at the end of the year. Most likely.

Derek, why don't you just copy and paste a glossary of the financial terms and phrases you use most frequently onto the end of every comment you post here or add it to your signature and direct people to refer to it whenever they don't understand what you're talking about? Also, expert or no, you're coming across as a bit rude (though in Kroothawk's case that may be somewhat justified).

Can a mod please keep all those off topic posters in my thread at bay? Pretty please?
I am tired of several poster's attempt to get this thread locked just because they deem us Dakka members unworthy to discuss this topic.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

dereksatkinson wrote:
There are some very basic things i've corrected here. Hell.. Skkipper came onto this thread and flat out told everyone I made him 100k based on my advice. So now you are going to sit here and call me incompetent? lol

Anecdotal evidence? I don't know this Skkipper so I have no idea whether he made 100K from your advice or not.

I could claim to have taught Stephen Hawking everything he knows, which would obviously mean I am the greatest theoretical physicist alive today. Just because I say it doesn't make it true.

Page 12. Wasn't hard to find, I just went to Derek's profile > checked his friends list > visited Skkippers profile > checked his posts.

The point isn't that it was said (I know it was) but that we have no idea if any of what they said actually happened. All we have is two random people on the internet saying that it did.

 Kroothawk wrote:
Can a mod please keep all those off topic posters in my thread at bay? Pretty please?
I am tired of several poster's attempt to get this thread locked just because they deem us Dakka members unworthy to discuss this topic.

Oh please, don't pull the martyr card out after everything you've been guilty of in this thread. You're lucky Alph seems to be the mod taking the most interest in the thread and is generally quite easy going, as the comments that have continued to go back and forth between you and Derek despite repeated cautions to tone it down would have earned you both a spell on the naughty step if I were in the position to decree those things.

I'm with Azreal13 on this. I see a bunch of shenanigans and its getting in the way of the topic I'm here to read.

Knock it off. I'd ignore the majority trouble makers but that would gut this thread nearly in its entirety. I think that some time apart for cooler heads to come forth is a must at this point as the diametrically opposed perspectives both Derek and Kroot are bringing are insightful to the topic at hand. Now if you two would realize that and post your points/shake hands and move on, the community would like that.

Thanks regardless for your posts gentlemen.

To get back to the root topic - Cypriot Digressions aside - how is the stock currently performing?

As an aside - I have already decided that The Cypriot Digression is going to be the title of an arc in the next steampunk espionage game that I run. For a throwaway line... it was too good to waste.

We will see how it performs after the next report - but I have honestly seen no action by GW that makes me think that the outlook is improving.

Quite the opposite, at this moment in time.

The Auld Grump

 frozenwastes wrote:
My position on the larger macro-economic factors is that they played a part in allowing the negative financial report and lack of dividend to have as much impact as it did. People full of hope and exuberance accept bad news far less easily in terms of actually acting on it in the stock market than people who have been struggling for 6+ years of economic uncertainty.

It might also be a worthwhile endeavor to take a look at GW's chart and see just how long the stock can move sideways after a big move up or down. It's a long, long time. So watching the stock so you don't miss something interesting might be a boring exercise. If you own GW stock, then you should already have an exit plan.

GW and stock. Heh.

Games Workshop has lost the ability to be a true global leader that they once were back in 2006. People should have paid attention to those investment firms when they started making their moves back in 2011. Going to take years if any to get back to those good ol' 800p point stock levels. I do however do not see a sudden dramatic drops (or increases). I see stagnation long term and slow contraction short term ahead as they continue to remove quality services from their stores (and elsewhere). And the reason is their inability and refusal to cope with what people would like to play, the continual changes in tastes of what the general wants and the continue global economic changes that lies ahead.

Share price currently fluctuating between 510-520p.
Biggest transactions recently: 50k shares sold 26th March ($428k ), 10k shares today ($85k ).
Nothing reported on GW's investor page.

Today someone sold 200,000 shares worth 1,7Mio US$ (plus someone 25000 shares worth 215,111 US$ half an hour earlier).
Guess, this will appear on the investors page soon.

As 200K shares is about 0.6% of issued ordinary shares it may not make an appearance in the investors page/"Notification of major interest in shares" as, I believe, the threshold is much higher.

(Although my calcs may be out by a decimal place)

 Koppo wrote:
As 200K shares is about 0.6% of issued ordinary shares it may not make an appearance in the investors page/"Notification of major interest in shares" as, I believe, the threshold is much higher.

(Although my calcs may be out by a decimal place)

I am not 100% sure what the UK laws are but for the most part they are pretty similar.

In the USA, if you are a large holder of a company, you are required to disclose any change in ownership. If you buy a share or sell a single share of the stock, you have to file a form 4 filing that discloses change in ownership. I believe currently you have to file that disclosure within 3 days of the trade. Now.. I know that GW is a UK company but for the most part, disclosures like this are pretty consistent worldwide with some obvious exceptions.

The real question is how much information can you really gain from looking at the investor page. IMHO.. Very little.

The people who are selling aren't going to tell you why they are selling until after the fact because they want to get the best price possible. The people who are buying aren't going to tell you until they are done buying because they want the best price possible. Even if you do end up seeing who was involved in a single transaction, due to a disclosure, you don't know their motivation.

You never really know the reasons for someone selling their stake in a company unless those people have explicitly stated the reason publicly. It could be that they need liquidity for another investment or they are selling because their investment objectives were met. Sometimes partners in an LP pass away and the executor of the estate chooses to sell their investment because it's no longer appropriate for the beneficiaries. The problem is that none of that information is really public. In other words, if you are trying to give meaning to individual upticks and down-ticks and volume then you are wasting your time.

Now.. whether or not it hits their investor page is completely speculation up until the time the disclosure is made. Like you said, it was .6% so it could be that both parties were sub 3% owners before and after the transaction.

So now that the stock has been steadily rising, no one wants to discuss it anymore? It's up around 570.. 100 points off it's low.

RSI is now overbought. Given that the general market is finally starting to show some weakness, i'd expect another pullback here relatively soon.

dereksatkinson wrote:
So now that the stock has been steadily rising, no one wants to discuss it anymore? It's up around 570.. 100 points off it's low.

RSI is now overbought. Given that the general market is finally starting to show some weakness, i'd expect another pullback here relatively soon.

TBH forgot all about it

dereksatkinson wrote:
So now that the stock has been steadily rising, no one wants to discuss it anymore? It's up around 570.. 100 points off it's low.

RSI is now overbought. Given that the general market is finally starting to show some weakness, i'd expect another pullback here relatively soon.

The only reason i found this thread interesting was because of the dismel finincal report. Once it moved past that i found it uninteresting.

As a outsider looking in, GW'S current maketing and release scedual do not seem sustainable. Their has been a noticable drop in quality. Im more interested in the next report to see what impact their tactic had. Buy not due to wishinh ill will. More out of legit interest and wanting to learn more about the challenges of marketing in our niche industry.

P.S. posted from phone. Excuse my spelling and typos.

You can't really look into low trade volume stocks daily with no new info from the company. I guess its wait and see until the next half-year report.

Gotta give some credit to GW since December though. The new website offering a free model seem to be driving up online purchased, edvidence the amount of the free SM captain is selling on ebay.

Also the 3rd HH rulebook from FW seem to be selling like hotcakes.

I'm beginning to see the trend GW is trying to move its customer base from the everyday middle income group to the high income group. I hope they did their reasearch and it pays out for them.

dereksatkinson wrote:
So now that the stock has been steadily rising, no one wants to discuss it anymore? It's up around 570.. 100 points off it's low.

RSI is now overbought. Given that the general market is finally starting to show some weakness, i'd expect another pullback here relatively soon.

It's still over 200 points below the fallout from the report. So whilst it's increasing slightly as presumably confidence is up a bit it's still got a long way to go before it recovers.

I also suspect it'll drop again because I can't see how they'll be able to make the next report look any better.

My reasoning (based on knowledge of the gaming market and not the stock market): the new webstore may have brought a spike in traffic and the free marine will have increased sales (but likely just pulled them forward from the upcoming months), offset against any potential fall out from the bugs and the site being down for over a day. The release schedule has continued it's pace but I don't think there's been any make or break releases beyond the Knights which seem to be pretty well received.

They don't appear to have made any changes to strategy, and I don't think the 1-man stores system will start becoming profitable. Closing EU headquarters will show up in this report as a fairly significant cost saving, so I expect the figures will be within 5% of the previous report.

They did release interim statement:

"For the period 2 December 2013 to 6 April 2014 Games Workshop Group PLC today issues the following interim management statement for the period 2 December 2013 to 6 April 2014. In the four months to 6 April 2014 trading has been broadly in line with the board’s expectations. "

Of course that tells us very little.

Backfire wrote:
They did release interim statement:

"For the period 2 December 2013 to 6 April 2014 Games Workshop Group PLC today issues the following interim management statement for the period 2 December 2013 to 6 April 2014. In the four months to 6 April 2014 trading has been broadly in line with the board’s expectations. "

Of course that tells us very little.

Yea, no kidding. The board could have been expecting sales to be dismal .

I think you'd have to go back and look at the projections from the mid-year report, but "broadly in line" leaves a lot of wiggle room. However, the interim statement did not say, "In the four months to 6 April 2014 trading has been strong, exceeding the expectations of the board."

ISTR one interim statement where they said that "trading has been below expectations", many years ago. And maybe one positive one. Usually it's just that standard one.

Backfire wrote:
They did release interim statement:

"For the period 2 December 2013 to 6 April 2014 Games Workshop Group PLC today issues the following interim management statement for the period 2 December 2013 to 6 April 2014. In the four months to 6 April 2014 trading has been broadly in line with the board’s expectations. "

Of course that tells us very little.

That is closer to an 'interim nonstatement'.

Board: Our expectations are that some folks are going to buy stock and other folks are going to buy stock.

Interim Report: Hey, look! Some folk sold stock and other folks bought stock! We were right!

Not saying anything either way as to how the stock is doing, just that the interim report is kind of... pointless.

The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

Backfire wrote:
They did release interim statement:

"For the period 2 December 2013 to 6 April 2014 Games Workshop Group PLC today issues the following interim management statement for the period 2 December 2013 to 6 April 2014. In the four months to 6 April 2014 trading has been broadly in line with the board’s expectations. "

Of course that tells us very little.

That is closer to an 'interim nonstatement'.

Board: Our expectations are that some folks are going to buy stock and other folks are going to buy stock.

Interim Report: Hey, look! Some folk sold stock and other folks bought stock! We were right!

Not saying anything either way as to how the stock is doing, just that the interim report is kind of... pointless.

The Auld Grump

Somewhat reminds me of this for some reason

Well, if the price stalls out here and heads down and makes a new low, then I'll be confident in calling the trend as going down. If it continues to waver between 625 and 493, then all I'll be able to say is that there's certainly no upward moving trend anymore. That's over.

My prediction at this point is some wavering around 560 and a slow wavering down to 493 again. What would prove me wrong would be breaking up over 625ish. 625ish is the low point of the previous upward trend, so I'd want the price to get back into the range of that upward trend in order to describe a return to it.

 frozenwastes wrote:
Well, if the price stalls out here and heads down and makes a new low, then I'll be confident in calling the trend as going down. If it continues to waver between 625 and 493, then all I'll be able to say is that there's certainly no upward moving trend anymore. That's over.

My prediction at this point is some wavering around 560 and a slow wavering down to 493 again. What would prove me wrong would be breaking up over 625ish. 625ish is the low point of the previous upward trend, so I'd want the price to get back into the range of that upward trend in order to describe a return to it.

GW is a very low volume stock with little news that comes out between reports. Past drops have had a big drop following the significant news (generally no dividend alert) followed by a period of 3-4 months where it climbs up slowly. After that - it drops again, and again...once the bottom is reached it sticks around there for a year or two before they manage to cut enough to start issuing dividends again. I see nothing in GW's current activity to make me think this will not happen again. We are currently a bit over half way through that 3-4 month period after the first drop. I would have expected a stronger interim statement if they actually thought they might have turned things around - so I do not doubt that it will drop again. It may hold in this range till the annual report - but there isn't really any there there to give reason for strong growth.

One of the problems with selling a bunch of the stock is that there are not a bunch of people wanting to buy it. Large stake holders are no doubt looking for their exits - but those sorts of things do take time. If it were another company trading at a higher volume with a faster news cycle of things which may motivate investors...well, I would consider traditional economics to be more relevant. However, most these small stocks that don't trade and don't make news don't normally have any sort of rapid changes and past patterns tend to be pretty good indicators of future performance. Especially considering that effectively nothing has changed within the company throughout the history of the company. The same mistakes they have made in the past will be made again and they have not demonstrated any inclining of changing their reaction to events within or without the company.

After closing the regional HQ... what does GW have left to cut?

Heck, their choosing to close the HQs took me by surprise, it does not seem to be something that helps in the long term - just a short term cut in costs, with much of that savings being lost by increased workload at the still extant HQ....

Looks good on paper, but only once.

The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
After closing the regional HQ... what does GW have left to cut?

Customers...creative staff...more customers...

Seriously though - they have actually been contracting the company to the point where they are not able to produce as much as they used to even if they wanted to. The thing is that they really do not appear to want to sell to more people, and are actively attempting to reduce their customer base.

If they sell one box of space marines at $50 that is more profitable than selling two boxes of space marines at $25 each. Even though they have the same impact on the revenue - they spent less money to produce, package and ship one box as opposed to two boxes. Things like the Knight Titans that they released are many times more profitable than the Ogryns - even if they sell 4 or 5 times as many units of the Ogryns compared to the Knights.

An ideal situation for GW would be to have 1 customer who buys a single item made with a 10 year old mold for $250,000,000 every year. That way they could fire their writers, designers, tool makers and get rid of all that pesky customer support that is so expensive when you actually have customers.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
After closing the regional HQ... what does GW have left to cut?

Customers...creative staff...more customers...

Seriously though - they have actually been contracting the company to the point where they are not able to produce as much as they used to even if they wanted to. The thing is that they really do not appear to want to sell to more people, and are actively attempting to reduce their customer base.

If they sell one box of space marines at $50 that is more profitable than selling two boxes of space marines at $25 each. Even though they have the same impact on the revenue - they spent less money to produce, package and ship one box as opposed to two boxes. Things like the Knight Titans that they released are many times more profitable than the Ogryns - even if they sell 4 or 5 times as many units of the Ogryns compared to the Knights.

An ideal situation for GW would be to have 1 customer who buys a single item made with a 10 year old mold for $250,000,000 every year. That way they could fire their writers, designers, tool makers and get rid of all that pesky customer support that is so expensive when you actually have customers.

As absurdly stupid as that sounds I can not fault the logic behind it....

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
Well, if the price stalls out here and heads down and makes a new low, then I'll be confident in calling the trend as going down. If it continues to waver between 625 and 493, then all I'll be able to say is that there's certainly no upward moving trend anymore. That's over.

My prediction at this point is some wavering around 560 and a slow wavering down to 493 again. What would prove me wrong would be breaking up over 625ish. 625ish is the low point of the previous upward trend, so I'd want the price to get back into the range of that upward trend in order to describe a return to it.

GW is a very low volume stock with little news that comes out between reports. Past drops have had a big drop following the significant news (generally no dividend alert) followed by a period of 3-4 months where it climbs up slowly. After that - it drops again, and again...once the bottom is reached it sticks around there for a year or two before they manage to cut enough to start issuing dividends again. I see nothing in GW's current activity to make me think this will not happen again. We are currently a bit over half way through that 3-4 month period after the first drop. I would have expected a stronger interim statement if they actually thought they might have turned things around - so I do not doubt that it will drop again. It may hold in this range till the annual report - but there isn't really any there there to give reason for strong growth.

One of the problems with selling a bunch of the stock is that there are not a bunch of people wanting to buy it. Large stake holders are no doubt looking for their exits - but those sorts of things do take time. If it were another company trading at a higher volume with a faster news cycle of things which may motivate investors...well, I would consider traditional economics to be more relevant. However, most these small stocks that don't trade and don't make news don't normally have any sort of rapid changes and past patterns tend to be pretty good indicators of future performance. Especially considering that effectively nothing has changed within the company throughout the history of the company. The same mistakes they have made in the past will be made again and they have not demonstrated any inclining of changing their reaction to events within or without the company.

I would counter that this is what is killing them. In your specific example, yes it makes more sense. However, what if lowering the price to $25 (from the $50 cited in the example) resulted in five boxes of Space Marines sold instead of the one. Now, let's say the cost, for sake of the example, was $5 to produce those marines. In the case of one at $50, you make $45 profit. In the case of five at $25, you make $100 profit. You make less margin on the latter, but you make more profit. As someone once said to me in order to always keep this front and center in my business - 10% of a billion is much better than 60% of a million.

Secondly, GW is going to have a certain amount of fixed and planned variable costs they have to cover - in other words they need a certain amount of minimum business to sustain themselves. At the rate they are going, they may soon not even have enough to cover this.

The next financial reporting period is going to be very interesting to say the least.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

If they sell one box of space marines at $50 that is more profitable than selling two boxes of space marines at $25 each. Even though they have the same impact on the revenue - they spent less money to produce, package and ship one box as opposed to two boxes. Things like the Knight Titans that they released are many times more profitable than the Ogryns - even if they sell 4 or 5 times as many units of the Ogryns compared to the Knights.

An ideal situation for GW would be to have 1 customer who buys a single item made with a 10 year old mold for $250,000,000 every year. That way they could fire their writers, designers, tool makers and get rid of all that pesky customer support that is so expensive when you actually have customers.

Although that may seem as ideal, narrowing the customer base too much makes one very vulnerable to market shifts etc. An extreme example - what if your one customer has a heart attack?
This is actually a problem for GW nowadays, their catalogue of games has got too thin. To bring out FFG again, they have a huge catalogue, and whilst most of their titles don't sell much and probably they aren't all that economical in some respects, they also aren't vulnerable should for example, new Star Wars movie flop and kill interest to X-wing franchise, or something.

 Wayshuba wrote:
I would counter that this is what is killing them. In your specific example, yes it makes more sense. However, what if lowering the price to $25 (from the $50 cited in the example) resulted in five boxes of Space Marines sold instead of the one. Now, let's say the cost, for sake of the example, was $5 to produce those marines. In the case of one at $50, you make $45 profit. In the case of five at $25, you make $100 profit. You make less margin on the latter, but you make more profit. As someone once said to me in order to always keep this front and center in my business - 10% of a billion is much better than 60% of a million.

Secondly, GW is going to have a certain amount of fixed and planned variable costs they have to cover - in other words they need a certain amount of minimum business to sustain themselves. At the rate they are going, they may soon not even have enough to cover this.

The next financial reporting period is going to be very interesting to say the least.

Backfire wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

If they sell one box of space marines at $50 that is more profitable than selling two boxes of space marines at $25 each. Even though they have the same impact on the revenue - they spent less money to produce, package and ship one box as opposed to two boxes. Things like the Knight Titans that they released are many times more profitable than the Ogryns - even if they sell 4 or 5 times as many units of the Ogryns compared to the Knights.

An ideal situation for GW would be to have 1 customer who buys a single item made with a 10 year old mold for $250,000,000 every year. That way they could fire their writers, designers, tool makers and get rid of all that pesky customer support that is so expensive when you actually have customers.

Although that may seem as ideal, narrowing the customer base too much makes one very vulnerable to market shifts etc. An extreme example - what if your one customer has a heart attack?
This is actually a problem for GW nowadays, their catalogue of games has got too thin. To bring out FFG again, they have a huge catalogue, and whilst most of their titles don't sell much and probably they aren't all that economical in some respects, they also aren't vulnerable should for example, new Star Wars movie flop and kill interest to X-wing franchise, or something.

Don't confuse what GW thinks is a good idea and what is actually a good idea. They have priced their products in a way which they have simply cut them out of the reach of many potential customers. They continue to make their products more difficult to find and obtain. They have reduced their catalog down to 3 games, and it seems that they are quite interested in reducing it to two games.

It isn't the way I would do business - but it is what they are doing.