Little Stock Update

[Caitsidhe]

here you go... enjoy...

http://www.stockcaller.com/it-seems-games-workshop-group-plc-will-go-down-just-reaches-52-week-low/62454/

[Psychosplodge]

Surely you should have titled this

"It begins..." :D

[Mr Mystery]

Indeed.

But of course, when the stock price goes up, we're told by the doom brigade it doesn't mean anything.

So why the doom brigade now feel it's suddenly of import...who knows? Oh. I do. Because it suits their bizarre, paranoid little fantasies that GW are about to explode, killing all within a 28mm radius.

Oh, and also it helps the OP pretend the 5-10% drop he 'predicted' was actually about the stock price, and not their sales.....

Obfuscation!

[Path Walker]

:rolleyes:

[Lexington]

Here's another piece (http://www.sharetrading.news/2016/03/23/games-workshop-grp-longaw-morning-trade-volumes-2/) of info. Not sure what means, precisely, but something's been going on with GW stock lately.

[Denzark]

Lex you cocked your linky a bit, but when I finally got to it, it would appear the prices are up from the OP.

[Lexington]

Lex you cocked your linky a bit, but when I finally got to it, it would appear the prices are up from the OP.
Ah, yeah, sorry about that. I posted it from an iPad, which hates forums and MCE editors with a puzzling fury.

Anyway, over on Das Warseers (http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?417188-Large-portion-of-GW-stocks-sold-and-bought-today), a few (seemingly) knowledgeable sorts have been explaining that a shift of ~4k shares isn't an enormous shift either way, given the 32 million in circulation. The current share price is much more affected by the big drop in January, which came on the heels of a lowered earning report and a warning that GW had underperformed over the Christmas season. It mostly seems to be reverting to the ~500 price it's been bottoming to since the January 2014 bombshell report that the whole company has yet to recover from.

[Erik Setzer]

I'm still not sure if this is accurate, but I was told by the local GW manager (so not exactly some angry anti-GW guy on the Internet) that the Start Collecting! boxes were a response to poor December sales, rushed out to try to get some cash flow going quickly. It seems like the company's seen some writing on the walls and it's not good. Their attempts to just stay profitable by raising prices and cutting corners (to the point they released at least one inferior quality product in the last few weeks) aren't working to stem the tide. I don't think AoS is responsible for the biggest issues, though it didn't help (that's not a shot at AoS, even if you love it you have to admit chucking your company's 30+ year old game in the trash and completely replacing it won't earn you much trust, especially when it was done without warning and preceded by some expensive releases hyping people for the game that got killed). I think the pricing scheme is just too much and competition that they've ignored is drawing away more and more people.

The positive of all of this, however, is that they might find themselves forced to correct a lot of their bad policies, and that could benefit the customers greatly (which would then benefit GW, as the customers buy more stuff). There's been some changes. Even if the SC! boxes were a panic move, it's good for the consumer. Ditto the return of Specialist Games.

[Lexington]

I'd agree with that take - I think we're seeing the end of 'Kirbyism' as a driving factor in GW's decision-making. They're engaging with the customer base in multiple encouraging ways, which is great! Unfortunately, a lot of bad decisions are baked into their product for at least a few years. The 'sell less for more' strategy is going to be an enormously difficult thing to remove from the company's business model, assuming there's even any desire to do that.

A grim note for GW from today, from impeccable rumor-man 75hastings69, who said the following over on Warseer (http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?417198-AoS-how-is-it-doing-in-reality):

I know a lot of people there too, AOS is NOT doing great, at all, anywhere.

GW's got a lot of work ahead of them if they're going to reverse the current trends.

[40kGamer]

I'm pretty 'meh' on the stock movement as there are so many market influences that can distort it either way. I have been concerned for the last decade with their strategy of ever increasing prices which they continue to vigorously pursue. It's at the point where even those with truckloads of money are losing some of their enthusiasm... which is sad as they have created some wonderful settings and barring the occasional 'ugly as sin' kit, they do offer high quality products.

[Erik Setzer]

Sadly, the rabidly pro-AoS crowd (I'm not exactly anti-AoS, nor entirely pro-AoS myself) won't hear any negative talk about the game. They only see the positives and not the negatives. Starting right off with how GW threw away the game system that got them really going with their own stuff, a 30-year-old game that had a lot of good years and could have been salvaged. There's no rulebook to buy for AoS, okay, but people coming in off the streets might not know where to get the rules, and the books to make the game more interesting are $74 (campaign books), and the battletomes aren't cheap either. Then there's the models, which are insanely expensive, and one look at that will turn people away faster than the cost of WFB models. Doesn't help when they promote the idea of playing with armies that would take $800-$1000 to build.

My own enthusiasm has seriously waned. It's not helped at all by the dwindling number of players at the local GW (heck, more people play GW games at other stores now), or by the GW manager's own clearly unhappy attitude toward how bad things have gotten. (While I can't blame the manager for feeling that way, he still needs to remember that his job involves customer relations, and that means putting on a smile even when you're feeling depressed or hateful.) But it has meant I've gotten more board games and computer games and started poking into other miniatures games.

[Caitsidhe]

Always useful to follow the trends:

http://www.riversidegazette.com/games-workshop-group-plc-cant-burn-your-short-portfolio-just-reaches-52-week-low/

[Erik Setzer]

Can't wait for someone to pop up and tell us all how this is really just proof the company is going great and no one knows what they're talking about if they suggest otherwise...

[Erik Setzer]

Not just a 52-week low. It's the lowest it's been since December, 2011. Ouch.

[Caitsidhe]

Can't wait for someone to pop up and tell us all how this is really just proof the company is going great and no one knows what they're talking about if they suggest otherwise...

Oh, I have faith someone will pipe up to tell us how this means nothing, is all part of their clever restructuring plan, yadda yadda yadda. They are as reliable as Old Faithful. :D

[Haighus]

This means nothing, it is all part of their clever restructuring plan, yadda yadda yadda. ;) I always though 'Old Faithful' was a cool name...

[Erik Setzer]

Well... this is interesting.

http://www.lse.co.uk/AllNews.asp?code=rkf1jntn&headline=Games_Workshop_Expects_Full_Year_Profit_A head_Of_Market_Expectations

Short version: Sales aren't going up or anything, but licensing income increased, meaning they have profit.

Couple of thoughts on that:

- If sales are the same as the prior year, that means all that work to chuck out their long-running game and replace it did nothing to boost the company. That's not a knock on AoS as a game, just that it's not showing to be some kind of amazing great decision to have chucked out WFB. They've also done multiple board games, Start Collecting!, and packaging kits as "deals" that are really just priced closer to what they should be to start with, and that all seems to just be keeping things even. Ouch. But hey, at least it's not a drop, right?

- When the profit growth is from licensing the IP and not increasing sales, that's not great. It's more amusing when you remember that the fantasy IP being licensed right now is the WFB world, not AoS, meaning it's a profitable IP and all, and other companies seem to know how to make money off of it.

Pretty much continued holding pattern for the company, but hey, while it's not a positive, at least it's not a negative, right?

[40kGamer]

Flat beats a dip any day. The jury's still out on AoS given it's such a young game. It takes a while to build a new customer base.

[Erik Setzer]

Flat beats a dip any day. The jury's still out on AoS given it's such a young game. It takes a while to build a new customer base.

In theory, they shouldn't have to.

I'm just wondering how many people will be finding excuses five years down the line when it doesn't manage to out-perform WFB and continues to show that throwing out your original core game and its 30+ years of history (especially while your profits are coming from licensing the IP out to people, proving it's still popular) perhaps wasn't the best idea.

I'm not so much opposed to AoS as I'm still pissed at GW for not being willing to admit they screwed up and got too greedy and that ran WFB into the ground and, if they're not careful, will repeat itself with 40K.