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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

You're just jealous your GW shares aren't making you vast profits

That would depend on when you bought them

DrRansom wrote:


On specialist games: GW apparently doesn't think that people's gaming budget can lie between 0 and several hundred dollars. With WH40K, it appears to be All In or Nothing.

Well said, got a chuckle from me. Sadly, I think it's true also.

Didn't James from Mantic end up working for GW? I really hope he is able to bring some skirmish games to GW.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


You're just jealous your GW shares aren't making you vast profits

Well, they did ok until I got rid of them in the "big sell-off of January 2014". That's the only sale that GW's had in decades.

RoninXiC wrote:
Some of those statements are outright hilarious.. and sad.. and stupid... and omfg did he really just say that?

Gentlemen, years from now that will be a case study in how not to write a CEO letter.

 Palindrome wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

You're just jealous your GW shares aren't making you vast profits

That would depend on when you bought them

Yep, I bought in around 200 something and auto-sold when they started plummiting. God I love stock software safety features.

Annual Report up! Ooh, came back from work just in time.

Someone who's knowledgeable fill me in: is it bad? Is it as bad as we thought?\

Christ, profit down 42%? Is that real, seriously?

 agnosto wrote:

Yep, I bought in around 200 something and auto-sold when they started plummiting. God I love stock software safety features.

Well done. People often have a plan to get into a stock, but very rarely a plan on when to get out. An automatic stop if the price plummets is a great plan to have.

 frozenwastes wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

Yep, I bought in around 200 something and auto-sold when they started plummiting. God I love stock software safety features.

Well done. People often have a plan to get into a stock, but very rarely a plan on when to get out. An automatic stop if the price plummets is a great plan to have.

I actually learned that the hard way after losing a few grand on a bio-tech stock when I decided play the penny-stock game. I bought a couple hundred shares of GW after the fall and sold it this morning; I don't have any other plans to buy back in at this point but you never know.

I don't post on here often these days, but I follow the state of GW fairly closely (mostly because I want to see them suffer the consequences of doing their damndest to alienate players like me) and I've got a decent accounting and business background:

First of all, I'll link the common size financial statements with automatically year-over-year change calculations built in:

Common size income statement

Common size cash flow statement

Segment revenue results

For those unfamiliar with common size statements, these take each line item and divide them by sales revenue to measure them as a percentage of revenue (typically the primary driver of the scale of all items on an income statement and the operating section of the cash flow statement). This lets you compare what percentage of that year's revenue each item makes up.

Finally, I've also calculated year-over-year changes for each line item in all three of these statements to allow a more fine-grained analysis of what's going on.

Let's start with revenue:

It's down, obviously, but the headline 8.24% decline in revenue conceals a darker picture further down.

Darker still is that given what we know about the front-loaded nature of sales of their releases (i.e. most of the sales come when the releases are new) and how GW has continued to increase the prices of new releases, this dollar decline in sales conceals a much larger unit-volume drop in sales. We can't get at exactly how large the unit-volume decline is, unfortunately, but do keep in mind it is significantly worse than the dollar decline.

Cost of sales:

One major problem is that GW's cost of sales (what it costs to manufacture and distribute the things it sells) has increased as a percentage of sales. For this to occur in the midst of a sustained company-wide cost cutting initiative strongly suggests that their cost of sales contain a fairly high proportion of fixed costs (i.e. costs that don't vary by how many units they make). This should be worrying as it indicates their gross margin is likely to continue shrinking as sales decline because the cost of sales will tend to shrink by less than the drop in sales.

This is a major roadblock to GW's attempt to make chicken salad out of chicken turd by raising prices and cost-cutting to try and compensate for declining unit-volume sales.

Gross Profit:

And here we see the consequence of sales falling faster than cost of sales. The decline in gross profit is significantly larger than the decline in sales.

Operating expenses (before exceptional items):

This item should be even more worrying to GW. Despite their much vaunted cost-cutting efforts, operating expenses (this includes the GW stores themselves as well as all the various other expenses necessary for their business to operate *except* the cost to make and distribute the stuff they sell) have (fractionally) gone UP as a percentage of sales compared to 2013. This indicates, that even before the exceptional items, they have failed to cut operating expenses as a percentage of revenue.

This also suggests that their store restructuring policy to small, cheap (bad-location), short-hours one-man stores is costing them a dollar in revenue for every dollar in operating expenses it saves. That's bad juju because it points to them not being able to cost-cut away the problem of declining sales. Who knows, maybe the costs they incurred to shutter all the national middle-management will actually save them more in expenses than it costs them in revenue? For now though, these numbers are pretty bad.

Cash flows from operations:

Here we get one surprising piece of information. That the 21.66% decline in cash generated from operations is very close to the 20.97% decline in operating profit before exceptional items suggests against the rumors that GW was shoving inventory onto indys and distributors before year end to pump up sales. If that had been the case to the extent rumored, we would expect the decline in cash from operations to be significantly larger (because indys and distributors typically pay after they receive the merchandise, unlike GW consumers who pay at purchase).

Segment sales:

Here we get some very interesting information, and one very confusing thing.

In their management discussion and analysis, GW report that:

Reported sales fell by 8.2% to £123.5 million for the year. On a constant currency basis, sales were down by 6.5% from £134.6 million to £125.9 million; progress was achieved in Other sales businesses (+20.9%) and Export (+2.7%) while sales in UK (-7.1%), Continental Europe (-10.6%), North America (-7.5%), Australia (-9.4%) and Asia (-3.3%) were in decline.

Those regional segment percentage change numbers do not jibe with the segment revenues as reported in detail in the financials. I think, but cannot confirm, that the segment percentage change numbers reported above by GW are on a constant currency basis, and I will proceed based on that assumption in my analysis. This means that, for looking at regional GW store + indy sales declines, look at the above from GW, for my next point, however, look to my linked numbers.

One key thing that I've highlighted in my analysis on this numbers is the segment performance net of what GW calls "Other sales businesses" (Direct online sales, Black Library, Forgeworld, and Warhammer World). This shows that revenue from GW stores + independent retailers has fallen by 10.34% rather than the overall 8.24% decline headline number everyone is focusing on, and that direct sales are not coming close to making up the revenue lost in their retail channels.

This does not bode well when they just spent quite a bit of money revamping their website and have been on a concerted effort to drive sales to the direct only online channel. It also pretty strongly suggests that the avalanche of digital DLC releases that GW has embarked upon amount to a drop in the bucket compared to the retail revenue they're losing. A bad sign for those that thought digital DLC would be a panacea to stem the retail bloodletting.


Overall analysis:

These financial results paint a pretty grim picture, much darker than the headline numbers would suggest.

GW's approach to try and overcome unit-volume declines with price increases, cost-cutting, digital DLC and driving people to the GW site and away from indys is failing miserably.

GW face a fairly high proportion of fixed costs in their manufacturing and distribution chain, and most likely their operating expenses as well, not to mention that cost-cutting in their retail operations seems to be costing them as much revenue as it saves them in expenses. This tends to foreclose cost-cutting further as a viable strategy to combat their decline unit-volume sales.

That revenue continued its decline from mid-year during a year in which GW released a new SM codex, Imperial Knights, and stuffed the first two weeks of a new edition of 40k (and remember what I said, and the Chapterhouse lawsuit filings indicated, that GW product sales are heavily front-loaded) into this fiscal year, continued to hike prices on new releases, and still managed this scale of a decline in revenue is very bad sign.

While still profitable, for the time being, the utter failure of GW's current strategy both suggests that they're only hope to reverse this negative trend to find a way to increase unit volumes, and that the strategy they've embarked upon and failed to obtain positive results from makes reversing course into a unit-volume boosting strategy exceedingly difficult. The exceedingly high buy-in required for GW's games, combined with the shrinking playerbase and continued undermining of GW and indy store GW gaming communities form serious roadblocks to that.

Looming on the horizon is the specter of network effects. It is well known with products like this that a big component to maintaining unit-sales volume is the absolute necessity of a large playerbase to increase the appeal of the products to the consumer, as a tabletop game where you cannot get games against other players is essentially worthless.

While GW would like to believe that the majority of its consumers want for nothing more than to purchase models from GW and paint them, without a thought as to whether they'll actually ever be able to get a game, the reality is likely quite different. It's well known that when the playerbase for a game in any given area declines past a certain critical threshold, it has a strong tendency to collapse. Persistent rumors from many sources indicate this threshold has already been crossed with Warhammer Fantasy. If this happens to 40k, the impact on GW will be rapid and vicious. 17 million pounds in cash does form a bulwark against rapid collapse, but it won't last long if sales plummet in light of the large fixed costs GW appears to bear.

 Mysterious Pants wrote:
Annual Report up! Ooh, came back from work just in time.

Someone who's knowledgeable fill me in: is it bad? Is it as bad as we thought?

It's a little better than what I expected. They are done cost cutting. The report outlined their new structure and it's literally cut to the bone. Local store manager reports to regional manager reports to board member. So if there's more revenue drops, there's no more cost savings through restructuring.

Their single employee stores are still rolling out and pretty much everywhere stores are closing faster than they are opening, but especially so in North America.

Revenue down, sales through every channel other than Forgeworld and Black Library are down. They spent 4 million on their new website but then reported it hasn't resulted in any higher sales numbers (still about 13% of GW's sales are through their webstore).

WayneTheGame wrote:
They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.

The only purchases from me in the last year have been 30% bundle discount + 25% online store discount + US RRP so yeah I heartily agree here. $50 for a land raider in SM SF Ultra is reasonable value... $6 per termie in the same bundle far less so however so still a ways to go. The one click bundles with no discounts are just /facepalm

 Yonan wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.

The only purchases from me in the last year have been 30% bundle discount + 25% online store discount + US RRP so yeah I heartily agree here. $50 for a land raider in SM SF Ultra is reasonable value... $6 per termie in the same bundle far less so however so still a ways to go. The one click bundles with no discounts are just /facepalm

To this I wonder if GW actually believed that the one-click bundles would trick people in to thinking that they were saving money.

Given their current money woes, I'm hoping that they realize their customers are not as stupid as they had hoped...

 Amplified wrote:
I don't post on here often these days, but I follow the state of GW fairly closely (mostly because I want to see them suffer the consequences of doing their damndest to alienate players like me) and I've got a decent accounting and business background:

First of all, I'll link the common size financial statements with automatically year-over-year change calculations built in:

Common size income statement

Common size cash flow statement

Segment revenue results

For those unfamiliar with common size statements, these take each line item and divide them by sales revenue to measure them as a percentage of revenue (typically the primary driver of the scale of all items on an income statement and the operating section of the cash flow statement). This lets you compare what percentage of that year's revenue each item makes up....
...
...
.

Wow! In-depth analysis -- Thank you!!

It honestly makes the situation look worse than I thought.

Reading Kirby's statements feels like I'm listening to a third rate criminal explaining some convoluted alcohol store heist plan to his cronies in a dark alley. His flowery, for lack of a better word, style has that crooked tone of someone who might have a little cunning, but not a lot of smarts and certainly not a lot of familiarity with 10th grade English.

Lots of self importance though.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Amplified wrote:
I don't post on here often these days, but I follow the state of GW fairly closely (mostly because I want to see them suffer the consequences of doing their damndest to alienate players like me) and I've got a decent accounting and business background:

First of all, I'll link the common size financial statements with automatically year-over-year change calculations built in:

Common size income statement

Common size cash flow statement

Segment revenue results

For those unfamiliar with common size statements, these take each line item and divide them by sales revenue to measure them as a percentage of revenue (typically the primary driver of the scale of all items on an income statement and the operating section of the cash flow statement). This lets you compare what percentage of that year's revenue each item makes up....
...
...
.

Wow! In-depth analysis -- Thank you!!

It honestly makes the situation look worse than I thought.

Yes, thanks for those Amplified--excellent!


That looks like a pretty grim year. I see their Australia plan seems to be...failing. -21% growth in Australia + -11% growth in North America (of which, part is likely export loss to Australian customers). Between these numbers and my gut feel based off the growing popularity of Warmahordes in that area---I take it the Warhammer brand is in its death throes down under.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Fezman wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
So, what could they release this year to help them out? New edition of 40K? New edition of Fantasy? Resurrect one or more of the Specialist Games? Or release an all new game? And would it be enough?

I guess they don't have a clue:

They do no demographic research and they don't know what the customers think.

If they'd done such research I doubt Dreadfleet would have happened for a start.

Oh, so you think people would say they didn't want a spin-off game if GW came asking?

They probably would, if you asked it in that non-specific and irrelevant way without a smidgen of context. Sure, they would say yes. Now if you had asked them if they would want to purchase dread fleet and described it to them, then they would have said, no.

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

 Yonan wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.

The only purchases from me in the last year have been 30% bundle discount + 25% online store discount + US RRP so yeah I heartily agree here. $50 for a land raider in SM SF Ultra is reasonable value... $6 per termie in the same bundle far less so however so still a ways to go. The one click bundles with no discounts are just /facepalm

To this I wonder if GW actually believed that the one-click bundles would trick people in to thinking that they were saving money.

Given their current money woes, I'm hoping that they realize their customers are not as stupid as they had hoped...

Could have a similar purpose as supersizing supposedly does. By having a supersize option, people are more likely to order a large than without a supersize option so even if it doesn't sell itself, it still stimulates sales merely by existing. People might think "hey, I should slowly work towards owning an entire chapter!" and increase normal purchases merely by seeing the existence of a whole chapter bundle.

Ta everyone for making me read every page of this fascinating and hilarious topic and not getting any work done.

A Town Called Malus wrote:Coming soon, Dreadfleet 2: Dread Harder.

I loled.

Palindrome wrote:The ideal answer to that would be to split 40k in half. Same scale in terms of miniatures but 1 detailed skirmish ruleset that is perfectly balanced (in so far as that is possible), basically Infinity with Space Marines and the ma(e?)ss battle game that is 7th. GW would still gets its miniatures sales, the players would be able to choose which type of game they want without having to play other games and it would considerably broaden the appeal of 40k. You will always get mixed opinions from customers but that is where statistics and metadata come to the rescue.

I'd do it the other way. Make 40K the skirmish game. (Or rather keep it as a skirmish game, 'cos that's what it's basic mechanics still is, just with too many minis) Just strip out all the bloat of the last few editions, including apoc nonsense, and bring it back to 2nd/3rd levels of minis. Use that to satisfy punters' desires for 'cinematics' and 'narrative' and big chunky action figures clamouring to be driven closer so they can hit the enemy with their sword. Then bring back epic as the tactical, proper mass battle game, that actually has enough space between the minis for at least a little pretense at maneuvre.

Though I'd like to say to all those saying "I wish GW would bring specialist games back": they're still there. They need just a little more effort to find, and you need to choose some good proxy or alternate miniatures. Regarding the latter, the recent stuff coming out of Onslaught Miniatures and Troublemaker Games has relit the epic fire under my seat. And having a look at some Shapeways sellers has almost done the same for the BFG fire beside it.

dethork wrote:Also, enough with the minis that have the facial expressions of people dropping bricks. It isn't grim dark. There is nothing grim dark about pinching a loaf. We all do it.

I loled again.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
GW ditching specialist games was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and I'm not saying that because I sold my dozen copies of dreadfleet and old copies of bloodbowl for vastly inflated prices. No, no, no

It's causing me some cognitive dissonance to see Dreadfleet lumped in with a set that I've synonymised with 'GW's good games'.

WayneTheGame wrote:Imagine if they actually made them 17ml dropper bottles like most everyone else?

Two of my favourite paint ranges are Coat d'arms and Ral Partha, and I'm glad they don't have droppers. I also use VMC, but my single abiding memory of those is a bottle of cork brown clogged so bad it exploded over my face and half the room.

Idolator wrote:They probably would, if you asked it in that non-specific and irrelevant way without a smidgen of context. Sure, they would say yes.

Despite my love of SG, I'd say most probably wouldn't, for reasons I've already gone over.

WayneTheGame wrote:
I said this in another thread but it bears repeating.

I do not understand why they act from a position of arrogance instead of one of aggressiveness. They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.

GW doesn't think it has competitors, so that is why they don't have to do it. Nothing to undercut. I said this in another thread, I went to my FGS, and I picked up a few GW stuff put them down right away and bought some other stuff where for me, I got better value. X-wing and Attack Wing. Minis I don't have to paint, or put together and it's cheaper. Being painted or pre assembled doesn't even come into it. I would have loved to put together my own Enterprise or Romulan ships. Thing is, If GW made a mini that was already made and painted, I am sure they would try and sell if to close to $100. So my money is going where I get better value.

You are so correct Wayne, that is what GW should be doing instead of trying to use lawyers to "undercut" them.

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

 Yonan wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.

The only purchases from me in the last year have been 30% bundle discount + 25% online store discount + US RRP so yeah I heartily agree here. $50 for a land raider in SM SF Ultra is reasonable value... $6 per termie in the same bundle far less so however so still a ways to go. The one click bundles with no discounts are just /facepalm

To this I wonder if GW actually believed that the one-click bundles would trick people in to thinking that they were saving money.

Given their current money woes, I'm hoping that they realize their customers are not as stupid as they had hoped...

Yeah they are absolutely clueless, I've no interest in quitting 40k, but I've bought feth all the last few years. Selling tens of thousands of kits for 50 bucks is better than selling a few hundred for 81. They have hit a platue lately and massively pissed everyone off, the quicker then learn that people actually want some value, the faster they will get back on the horse.

If ever.

Apparently the GW CEO went to the Business Cat School of Truth Spinning.

"No no no, we're not failing. We're finding out what doesn't work."

The Telegraph: "Fantasy figures: Games Workshop’s CEO takes alternative view of 'good'"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/10997611/Fantasy-figures-Games-Workshops-CEO-takes-alternative-view-of-good.html

Davor wrote:
Yeah they are absolutely clueless, I've no interest in quitting 40k, but I've bought feth all the last few years. Selling tens of thousands of kits for 50 bucks is better than selling a few hundred for 81. They have hit a platue lately and massively pissed everyone off, the quicker then learn that people actually want some value, the faster they will get back on the horse.

If ever.

Exactly. I mean that seems like business 101 to me; obviously you don't go for strictly quantity > quality because without quality nobody will buy, but you also don't charge a premium for a commodity and make less money versus selling more at a price people will buy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Davor wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
I said this in another thread but it bears repeating.

I do not understand why they act from a position of arrogance instead of one of aggressiveness. They should be undercutting all of their competitors, offering deals and bundles (REAL bundles) and discounts, to make 40k ubiquitous AND affordable and corner the market again. Right now, they price stuff ridiculously high seemingly because "We can get away with it" and open the gates to competitors taking their market share.

GW doesn't think it has competitors, so that is why they don't have to do it. Nothing to undercut. I said this in another thread, I went to my FGS, and I picked up a few GW stuff put them down right away and bought some other stuff where for me, I got better value. X-wing and Attack Wing. Minis I don't have to paint, or put together and it's cheaper. Being painted or pre assembled doesn't even come into it. I would have loved to put together my own Enterprise or Romulan ships. Thing is, If GW made a mini that was already made and painted, I am sure they would try and sell if to close to $100. So my money is going where I get better value.

You are so correct Wayne, that is what GW should be doing instead of trying to use lawyers to "undercut" them.

It just boggles the mind; I mean I get that a lot of it is likely wishful thinking, it's just that the paints in particular stick out in my mind because they actually are very good quality paints, but not worth paying more than everybody else to get less of it (thereby needing to buy more later). That stinks of unethical practices to me (akin to selling a machine part and making it wear out faster so you'll have to buy another; best analogy I can think of ).

Their entire thinking they are a monopoly is what's ruining and will ruin them. If they woke up, realized what their competition is doing and take the appropriate steps to compete with them, GW could be a company that I would support again. But not at their current prices, and certainly not with their current attitude.

 Mysterious Pants wrote:
The Telegraph: "Fantasy figures: Games Workshop’s CEO takes alternative view of 'good'"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/10997611/Fantasy-figures-Games-Workshops-CEO-takes-alternative-view-of-good.html

Once again GW hits the mainsteam press due to something 'good'

I'm a bit surprised that the share price hasn't taken a bigger hit, or is -2.15% a lot?

Does anyone else think that if the CEO is "stepping down" as he put it, that it could mean good things if someone with a lick of sense takes his place?

That makes assumptions on how much pull the CEO has, WeaponPrime. There is a lot of culture and entrenched ideals at GW, a change in CEO is going to be done by those people. Just changing the CEO is not going to be a magic pill.

 Crimson wrote:
I'm a bit surprised that the share price hasn't taken a bigger hit, or is -2.15% a lot?

Thing with the share price is that January will have shaken a lot of small scale investors loose.

They've paid a dividend, which will have encouraged purchases before the qualification date, and has seen a steady, but undramatic, fall since it was paid, as those who bought stock just for a quick payout have been divesting themselves.

Almost 50% of GW's shares are owned by institutional investors, and a further ~15% owned by Kirby and other senior management. They've all had dividends, and are in it for the long haul in all likelihood, and in most cases have probably seen a decent return on the purchase price, regardless of the roller coaster in between times.

All this means is that, in reality, there probably aren't enough equity holders of the sort who would likely panic and try and offload their stock in a hurry, causing a run on the price. Remember anyone who bought at the start of the year has made money in the stock and been paid a divided, they're unlikely to be too dissatisfied.

 Mysterious Pants wrote:
Annual Report up! Ooh, came back from work just in time.

Someone who's knowledgeable fill me in: is it bad? Is it as bad as we thought?\

Christ, profit down 42%? Is that real, seriously?

It could have been worse, but not that much worse. Second half-year was not quite as disastrously bad as the first, but still I gather it must have been a slight disappointment, given that they promoted crap out of everything during the Spring (Imperial Knights everywhere, promotional miniature campaign with website opening etc). Profit is down partly because of 'exceptional items' (mostly severance pay to laid off employees).

As noted, they have plenty of fixed costs, which are in control atm and they still did a good profit given low sales: however if the sales dip further, the only thing left to be cut is closing down stores. Big time. Good news is that if they return to growth path (Kirby cautiously promised "single digits growth"), their profits will be excellent, but that's a big if.

Regarding their store model, which is essentially a replacement for conventional marketing they don't do: it would work better if the stores had more stuff to sell. They only sell 40k, WHFB and LOTR/Hobbit, and by what Kirby said, soon it's only 40k/WHFB. And one-man stores are too small to maintain active playing community by themselves (after all, you need tables to play on). If a random person walks into GW store, odds that he/she sees something which interests her is quite low since in essence there is only two products on sale.

GW catalogue is just way too thin. They don't have a gateway game, they don't have any other types of games than tactical scale ground war game, they don't have board games. Compare to FFG, which has a huge catalogue. Sure, many of the titles are not that popular (some not necessarily all that great either). But there is almost certainly something for everyone. GW needs to broaden their appeal, instead of cutting the "useless" branches.

 xXWeaponPrimeXx wrote:
Does anyone else think that if the CEO is "stepping down" as he put it, that it could mean good things if someone with a lick of sense takes his place?

IF being the key word. But remember that Kirby is still the Chairman of the Board, so it's entirely possible that he'll just appoint a Krony as a successor who will do the same thing that he would.