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How do!

Its that time of year again

And once more, GW has record takings and record profits. Even when adjusted for constant currency. Last year total takings were £525m, this year it’s £617m. Profits before tax have gone from £203m to £262.8m. And that increase isn’t solely down to Licensing Revenue.

So financially all nice and rosey.

Commentary also includes tariffs. Remember where you are, and the no politics rule on that one.

Warhammer+ has again expanded its subscriber base, going from 176,000 to 232,000. So I guess that’s not going anywhere terribly soon.

Right, enough from me. Go pick the bones out of it.

A couple of things that jump out -

Website sales are down again, despite significant growth in every other sales channel. Excluding digital sales website sales are down reasonably significantly. Again, the fact that the web store is terrible since the last redesign is a very real millstone around the company, but I do also think the lack of incentive to buy from GW over third parties online for any stock that is available to trade accounts is also beginning to make a difference. So I'd expect more pre-order bonus tat from GW if you buy direct online.

Also notably, they mention that product underperformed in the first half of the financial year and that had a material effect on warehousing costs (but sales over the rest of the year made up for it). Presumably that is Skaventide and why they gave all those copies away? The 40k slate was a bit weak then too but it's much smaller product and I doubt it would have as much of a warehousing impact.

It’s been at least a decade of ridiculous growth. Memory genuinely fails me as to when it started, but it’s been going on for a decent while.

Looks to have been the 2016/2017 Annual Report the first solid result was gained (£118m to £143m takings). Profits went from £16,948 to £38,403.

So not quite a decade. But it’s never looked back since then.

Will we continue to see double digit growth down the line? Right now, sure. The Amazon show will be a further shot in the arm, and it certainly feels like a business that knows what it’s doing and how to maximise its takings and profits.

But there is still market saturation. Any market can be saturated to the point growth is slow or non-existent. Where does that lie for GW? I honestly don’t know. But I don’t think it’ll be any time soon.

In the report, they specifically mention that tie-in products to Space Marine 2 and Secret Level sold particularly well - and footfall traffic increased as a result. But passing fad is passing fad. Whether that is turned in some capacity to repeat customers? Some of them, sure. But enough of them? Who knows.

30%+ growth for warhammer+ is pretty impressive (especially a i thought this was the weakest year yet)

I'd love to know what the churn on the subscriber base is

and overall really impressive results. They'll need to get on spending/paying out dividends to get their cash reserves down

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
30%+ growth for warhammer+ is pretty impressive (especially a i thought this was the weakest year yet)

I'd love to know what the churn on the subscriber base is

Usual caveats for anecdotal evidence, but I've had several members of non-tabletop Discords where I've become the resident "Warhammer Guy" ask me about WHTV because they want to know more about Warhammer and decided the shows may be worth watching.

There's definitely interest for it outside of the usual circles these days.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
30%+ growth for warhammer+ is pretty impressive (especially a i thought this was the weakest year yet)

I'd love to know what the churn on the subscriber base is

Usual caveats for anecdotal evidence, but I've had several members of non-tabletop Discords where I've become the resident "Warhammer Guy" ask me about WHTV because they want to know more about Warhammer and decided the shows may be worth watching.

There's definitely interest for it outside of the usual circles these days.

Isn't AoS 4th ed also the first AoS edition with battletome integration into and the old army builder replaced by the Warhammer app (or whatever it's called)? When the question came up for 40k I believe a fair few people seemed to think that while Warhammer+ is less economic than app subscription, the complete package is considered better value and therefore the superior choice. We might see a repeat of that here.

As Warhammer+ is necessary for full use of the digital content of 40k and AoS, I am surprised that number is so low and that adding AoS from free to subscription only didn't increase that number further

 Geifer wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
30%+ growth for warhammer+ is pretty impressive (especially a i thought this was the weakest year yet)

I'd love to know what the churn on the subscriber base is

Usual caveats for anecdotal evidence, but I've had several members of non-tabletop Discords where I've become the resident "Warhammer Guy" ask me about WHTV because they want to know more about Warhammer and decided the shows may be worth watching.

There's definitely interest for it outside of the usual circles these days.

Isn't AoS 4th ed also the first AoS edition with battletome integration into and the old army builder replaced by the Warhammer app (or whatever it's called)? When the question came up for 40k I believe a fair few people seemed to think that while Warhammer+ is less economic than app subscription, the complete package is considered better value and therefore the superior choice. We might see a repeat of that here.

Yes, that's possible.

To be honest I also think people just really liked that Inquisitor.

 The Phazer wrote:
Again, the fact that the web store is terrible since the last redesign is a very real millstone around the company,

So I'm not the only one. I HATE the new webstore design. The older one was easier to sort, browse and find units I might be interested in but forgot about or didn't know about. I've come across AoS models I've purchased for DND this way, and I don't know squat about them. Now, I just google the exact mini I want or log in on pre-order day. No more browsing for me on that horrible design.

The new webstore is terrible for navigation. Furthermore the way its setup there's a whole series of specialist games that aren't even shown very well, you have to make multiple menu clicks to get to them and that's all name driven. So basically if you don't know its there you won't go find it.

I agree the old store was super easy to browse on and if you're browsing you've more chance to spend.


I do also think that the lack of sales on the Warhammer Store and the fact that every single 3rd party charges less on pretty much everything that isn't "direct only" means that if you're already online chances are you don't need the GW webstore to buy from. If anything the GW webstore should be more of a huge showcase to advertise and then people go elsewhere to buy.

You can also argue that their website being on a down isn't a huge problem - yes it should be better, but customers are still buying; profits are still up and in theory buying from 3rd parties means that local buying is up which means growth outside of Nottingham in actual playing and engaging customers is up (people buying local/supporting local). So that's an honest boon.


You could even follow that through to say that if the GW webstore were same price or cheaper it would drive sales but at the same time diminish market income outside of GW and whilst GW wants the money they also need game groups and local venues to thrive.

All of Kirby’s genius moves finally bear fiscal fruit…

He caused Lockdown? Nice

In some defence of Kirby, he’s arguably the victim of his own success.

He took GW from Enthusiastic Nutters to a company with a firm footing. But, it eventually outgrew him.

That’s not intended as a slight, just that different businesses of different sizes need different approaches.

Kevin Rowntree is the current architect, and clearly doing well. Not least because he’s less sniffy about Licensing. Not only is (careful!) Licensing free money for the parent company, but it can get your product in front of new eyes,

Likewise, the core of the company is now so successful, it can put out more niche games. Provided they wipe their own nose in terms of production costs? They fill a niche with Official Product, and so make it harder for competitors to fill that niche. And they also mean those who can’t or won’t pay for a full army now have cheaper alternatives, and it’s all cash in the till.

So whilst the change in High Heid Yin was absolutely necessary? I don’t like to be too mean to Kirby.

Honestly Kirby likely could have lasted far longer if he and his management team weren't so isolated from the actual customers.

The Internet policy of GW at the time; the marketing; the general level of top end interaction with community and of using community feedback were all wrong. He never really embraced the power of the internet and if anything was hostile against it; plus clearly knew the numbers side of things but fast lost touch with the context of what drove those numbers.

Eg driving money into Marines and shutting down side games and other factions because Marines always gave the best returns; failing to realise that marines need non-marine targets to shoot and that each side game he abandoned left a gap in the market that other firms were more than willing to grow and develop on their own.



Still much of the fundamental infrastructure and policies he set in place gave GW the foundation to go a LOT further with just a tweak to management.

Kirby was weak, Kirby was a fool, he had the whole market within his grasp and let it slip away.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

So whilst the change in High Heid Yin was absolutely necessary? I don’t like to be too mean to Kirby.

Eh...

I think Kirby deserves some credit - but also some hostility.
And I have to admit I wasn't there, I can't say what was Kirby, what was Rowntree etc.

Yes Kirby kept the companies discipline. Things could have gone completely off the rails as the LOTR boom (peaking around 2004) drew to a close. Financially GW was at its weakest around 2007. It was never in as bad a spot again.

The observation of "most of our customers don't actually play the game" was in some senses quite astute. Its almost certainly accurate - however vexing it can be to those online. (In turn, people who spend all day talking about 40k, but never buy a mini, are not customers of GW either).
The problem though is that this seemed to evolve into almost a contempt for gaming.

Its a topic that locks threads - but AoS 1.0 was the sort of culmination of this vision. We'll have a game which is barely a game and you'll just buy models. WHFB was toast. The year after would see 40k lose its crown as the most bought miniatures game - which I think it had held for ages, almost certainly since LOTR died off over a decade earlier. Sure it wasn't a complete financial disaster - £17m is still a profit, but the trajectory was going nowhere fast.

The answer perhaps being that if everyone's saying your games suck, few people buy grey plastic and rule books to stick in their cupboards and attics.

I think the turning point was the Deathkill Overwatch set. I can't say when this was greenlit etc - but it was amazing product, it flew off shelves and felt completely at odds with the sort of "early to mid 2010s Kirby era". It sounds a bit bonkers, but I think it completely changed the dynamic of what/how the next edition of 40k would look like. Gathering Storm went down well too - and then 8th edition arrived with a licence to print money. They also sorted out AoS so it would in fact be a game. GW was back to their dynamic early 00s success - but on a far grander scale.

Will it end at some point? Possibly. They've got be careful on "Warhammer Fatigue" - which I think can effect any franchise. But equally like an awful lot of formerly "teen nerd hobbies", there seems to be massive market of adults that have plenty of money - if they want to spend it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Will we continue to see double digit growth down the line? Right now, sure. The Amazon show will be a further shot in the arm, and it certainly feels like a business that knows what it’s doing and how to maximise its takings and profits.

But there is still market saturation. Any market can be saturated to the point growth is slow or non-existent. Where does that lie for GW? I honestly don’t know. But I don’t think it’ll be any time soon.

The sky is the limit.

I am constantly amazed by the sheer number of people that 'should' know about GW that just don't. If you are into comics, video games, or D&D, you would think there would be at least a passing familiarity with 'Games Workshop' or 'Warhammer' but more often than not there just isn't. Though that also gets into a tangent of the people that think D&D is the sum total of what RPGs are, so I am also not surprised at what they are knowledgeable of.

I'd say Space Marine 2 helped with recognition in terms of what people are familiar with, but there is still a LOT of ground to cover.

Webstore sales being down is likely a good thing. Strong distribution channels provide security for the kind of large production runs GW needs where direct sales are a lot more reliant on producing to demand.

As for Kirby, he was just mostly a quarterly growth style CEO playing the numbers game. It definitely helped the company grow but wasn't sowing the kind of seeds needed to do much more than increase profits at the cost of political capital until things collapse, hopefully after you've sold to a bigger fish.

A lot of the current success comes from Rowntree investing in things that aren't directly tied to the bottom line. There's been so much community marketing and licensing outreach that has expanded the brand. Kirby is absolutely right in that few of their customers play the game, but he sorely misunderstood how much those customers cared about the game they're not playing and the vibes around it when they buy product.

While I am glad that Warhammer+ subs are going up, there are those like me who can't justify getting a free mini for a faction I don't want or some uninteresting shows for $60 when I can do the numbers on army building for free and when there are painting tutorials on Youtube. What's more, that $60 could actually go on a unit or book I need.


On another note, I am interested in how much sales have gone up due to Space Marine 2.

Exactly - many people collect and want to play but don't have the opportunity. Take away the game and you take away that drive.

There's also the fact that even those who do play can often take ages to actually build a functional army. Which is why those smaller format games have taken off so well.

Kids just don't have the money; adults don't have the time - so the two groups both have ample reason to want Underworlds, Warcry, Killteam. And even though the latter has been part of the rules for ages; having it as its own thing changed it from the "demo game mode used to introduce you the first few times" into its own dedicated game

This seems like it belongs here since it is GW finance related so...

Games Workshop cheers record year but faces £12m US tariff hit

Games Workshop saw North American sales rise 14.6% to record levels of £51.7 million for the year to June, as it benefited from more store openings over the year.

However, the company cautioned that it could face higher costs because of new tariff plans from US President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Our current estimate is that if we did nothing, new tariffs could impact profit before tax by around £12 million in 2025/26,” the company said.

It said it plans to deal with the issue in its “normal pragmatic way” and will not change its operational plans “too much”.

Tariff costs are likely to reduce its gross profit margins by around 2% for the year, but the company said it expects to recoup this through efficiencies.

It’s sorta fun, I been getting recommended a few videos that GW is cooked all last week.

I’m honestly always surprised how well they can do. But they are keeping momentum going well I think, even if they have issues.

Games Workshop saw North American sales rise 14.6% to record levels of £51.7 million for the year to June, as it benefited from more store openings over the year.

However, the company cautioned that it could face higher costs because of new tariff plans from US President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Our current estimate is that if we did nothing, new tariffs could impact profit before tax by around £12 million in 2025/26,” the company said.

It said it plans to deal with the issue in its “normal pragmatic way” and will not change its operational plans “too much”.

Tariff costs are likely to reduce its gross profit margins by around 2% for the year, but the company said it expects to recoup this through efficiencies.

“normal pragmatic way”?

I see a Price increase coming to the US in the future. May be sooner, may be in conjunction with next year's normally scheduled price increase.

Page 9

Manufacturing
Our manufacturing focus has remained, as always, on producing the best fantasy miniatures in the world.
Our central forecasting team has performed better this year. There is still some ongoing work to do to meet and ultimately beat our
operational metrics on stock availability across all of our core IP ranges. The team is working collaboratively with our sales teams to ensure
progress is made soon. They understand their key goal: always have the right product in the right place, in the right quantities at the right
time. Our two existing manufacturing sites (F1 and F2 as defined earlier) performed well throughout the year.
We have been increasing our manufacturing capacity: having secured planning permission, construction of Factory 4 (F4) has now started
and we aim to have this completed in the summer of 2026. Most of the construction costs for F4 (c.£8m) will fall in the next financial year.
A building (51,000 sq. ft vs for comparison our main HQ site at 628,000 sq. ft) a short walk from our existing factories at Easter Park has
been purchased during the period for £2.9 million. It has now been refurbished to operate as our new paint production facility (F3),
allowing us to deliver higher volumes when we need to. We have also purchased an additional piece of land (31,000 sq. ft) opposite (F2) on
Willow Road, at a cost of £2.1 million, that will be used in the short term as temporary car parking and will give us options to increase
capacity (by developing the land) in the future.
Total production costs have increased by £1.0 million to £26.8 million,

Still work to meet and ultimately beat our operational metrics on stock availability across all of our core IP ranges. - They are not wrong there.

Likely F4 Factory operational about this time next year, so at least a year more of backlogs in product, and likely another year for it to clear out.

Paint is now being made in F3 building, 1/10th the size of their main HQ.

They also bought more land to use currently as a carpark and later for expansion as needed.

So will take time to get miniatures sorted but progress ongoing.
Paint looks to be further along
Set for growth in the future if need be

 alextroy wrote:

Games Workshop saw North American sales rise 14.6% to record levels of £51.7 million for the year to June, as it benefited from more store openings over the year.

However, the company cautioned that it could face higher costs because of new tariff plans from US President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Our current estimate is that if we did nothing, new tariffs could impact profit before tax by around £12 million in 2025/26,” the company said.

It said it plans to deal with the issue in its “normal pragmatic way” and will not change its operational plans “too much”.

Tariff costs are likely to reduce its gross profit margins by around 2% for the year, but the company said it expects to recoup this through efficiencies.

“normal pragmatic way”?

I see a Price increase coming to the US in the future. May be sooner, may be in conjunction with next year's normally scheduled price increase.

Too bad GW won't just eat the tarriff, since the exchange rate has been lopsided against the US and other countries for a while now.

 MajorWesJanson wrote:

Too bad GW won't just eat the tarriff, since the exchange rate has been lopsided against the US and other countries for a while now.

Profits are only up by about 25%. There's absolutely no way that GW could possibly do anything other than increase prices due to [Insert Current Year Reason Here] tariffs.

Tyel wrote:

Yes Kirby kept the companies discipline. Things could have gone completely off the rails as the LOTR boom (peaking around 2004) drew to a close. Financially GW was at its weakest around 2007. It was never in as bad a spot again.

Sorry, what? They were in their worst shape in 2007 rather than in 2014-2016 when at one point they were weeks away from bankruptcy?

Source: https://youtu.be/-63A7cDkOm8?t=274

What's your source, your gut? Elvish intuition? A spot of edibles of an evening?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:

Will it end at some point? Possibly. They've got be careful on "Warhammer Fatigue" - which I think can effect any franchise. But equally like an awful lot of formerly "teen nerd hobbies", there seems to be massive market of adults that have plenty of money - if they want to spend it.

As annoyed as I am by your unsourced, easily-disproven claim, I do agree with you here.

GW is currently benefiting from the fact that the people who have intense nostalgia for Warhammer (and may or may not have been able to dip their toe in during childhood/teenage years) are now entering their highest-earning years. There's a widespread manchild appetite out there to throw money at the allures of their youth, and GW isn't the only beneficiary; see the rising price/demand for vintage videogames, toys, MTG and Pokemon cards, etc.

That trend can easily continue for at least another 10-20 years imo (as long as society doesn't collapse lmao).

I am less confident about continued recruitment, kids' attention spans, and the waning interest in engaging in in-person social activities.

I think GW probably senses some of this, and will accordingly move much more heavily into licensing. The broad success of Space Marine 2 showed them the mainstream is ready for their stuff; the Amazon show could continue this if it's decent/not awful/not a victim of culture war griping.

And 3D printing is still looming, picking off more and more people every year who would otherwise be buying at least some GW minis. People like to dismiss the threat of 3D printing because it hasn't TOTALLY DESTROYED PUNK GW the way some proponents would have had it a decade ago. But if you look at GW's own assessment of 3D printing from that era it was equally stupid in the other direction.

Because no one seems able to grasp the essential simplicity of what we do there has always been the search for the Achilles heel, the
one thing that Kirby and his cronies have overlooked. These are legion. I run through the list from time to time when someone says that
computer games will be the death of us – they are so much more realistic now! – again. This year it is 3-D printing. Pretty soon
everyone will be printing their own miniatures and where will we be then, eh?

We know quite a lot about 3-D printers, having been at the forefront of the technology for many years. We know of what we speak. One
day 3-D printers will be affordable (agreed), they are now, they will be able to produce fantastic detail (the affordable ones won't) and
they will do it faster than one miniature per day (no, they won't, look it up). So we may get to the time when someone can make a poorly
detailed miniature at home and have enough for an army in less than a year. That pre-supposes that 3-D scanning technology will be
affordable and good enough (don't bet the mortgage on that one) and that everyone will be happy to have nothing but copies of old
miniatures.

All of our great new miniatures come from Citadel. It is possible that one day we will sell them direct via 3-D printers to grateful
hobbyists around the world. That will not happen in the next few years (or, in City-speak, 'forever') but if and when it does it will just
mean that we can cut yet more cost out of the supply chain and be making good margins selling Citadel 3-D printers.
Kirby, 2014

I'd just like to point out that 3D printing is honestly on the dwindling side of things. It's still growing but its growth is massively slowed compared to the pandemic times and even not that long after.

A lot of 3D print creators are struggling and are starting to shift more toward trying to get into the physical market. Ergo 3D printing is just another manufacture method.

The other factor is burn-out on customers - customers who can buy 1000s of files really cheaply burn out under the weight of unprinted files. It's not like a mountain of unbuilt plastic which they can sell off secondhand and then fund more purchases. Instead they are more likely to drift away form purchasing.

So the whole customer cycle is vastly sped up.

It's not impossible, but honestly physical production still beats it by an insane margin on sales and I don't see that changing for a long time. 3D printers have to get insanely easier to use and simpler and cleaner and the resin has to get a LOT safer (ironically the thermally cured resins that are totally skin safe are even more dangerous in liquid form)

 Overread wrote:
Exactly - many people collect and want to play but don't have the opportunity. Take away the game and you take away that drive.

There's also the fact that even those who do play can often take ages to actually build a functional army. Which is why those smaller format games have taken off so well.

Kids just don't have the money; adults don't have the time - so the two groups both have ample reason to want Underworlds, Warcry, Killteam. And even though the latter has been part of the rules for ages; having it as its own thing changed it from the "demo game mode used to introduce you the first few times" into its own dedicated game

Underworlds and WarCry are the main exemplars of this.

Me? Whilst I’ve nothing against their rules, I’m not terribly interested in the games. But the models? Not only are they, for GW, reasonably cheap, but they rather sensibly explore niche forces of the Mortal Realms, which helps the background depth.

In the Old World, your Marauders and Cultists All Looked The Same. AoS now has weird sub-cults, worshipping perhaps only an aspect of a Chaos God, reflected in their arms and armour.

Where might AoS be without such added colour?

 Overread wrote:
I'd just like to point out that 3D printing is honestly on the dwindling side of things. It's still growing but its growth is massively slowed compared to the pandemic times and even not that long after.

A lot of 3D print creators are struggling and are starting to shift more toward trying to get into the physical market. Ergo 3D printing is just another manufacture method.

The other factor is burn-out on customers - customers who can buy 1000s of files really cheaply burn out under the weight of unprinted files. It's not like a mountain of unbuilt plastic which they can sell off secondhand and then fund more purchases. Instead they are more likely to drift away form purchasing.

So the whole customer cycle is vastly sped up.

It's not impossible, but honestly physical production still beats it by an insane margin on sales and I don't see that changing for a long time. 3D printers have to get insanely easier to use and simpler and cleaner and the resin has to get a LOT safer (ironically the thermally cured resins that are totally skin safe are even more dangerous in liquid form)

Also its in the realms of digitally generated and distributed asset, AI will further compromise those endeavours.

GW will probably avoid STLs as much as it can, specially knowing how easy their IP will be distributed and copied by other individuals if they go that route...

Tarifs will be passed on to US customers for sure.

Note: on the point of how dangerous these resins are for your health Im baffled how those managed to get into peoples households and unregulated sellers are distributing cured/uncured/weird resins/mixes? prints with little/no quality control... For me the fun stops when health risks are involved to this level.