Games Workshop's stock loses 24% value today. It has begun.

[Mr Mystery]

In addition, I'm not aware of any profit warning going out this time?

[DarkenAvatar]

I'm going to weigh in even though I'm not much of an internet commentator. We all know basic economics, you look for the highest price that will get you as much money to pay for the sales you would have had at a lower point. its the sweet spot on pricing. The problem with that as I see it in games workshops case is that while they may have reached that point for their current fans, they are light years beyond it with any new ones they would be trying to attract.

Our hobby is too expensive to start. and you need a certain healthy number of players in your pool in order to attract new players. No one starts a game that is as big of a commitment as this without a certain guarantee that they will be able to play with the models that they buy and spend so much time on.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

"Really I think that despite the headline of "Bombshell" this news was more the pop of a gretchin blunderbuss."

Quite, there's been a lot of terms like "crisis" and "spectacularly bad", but it really isn't justified. Unless, of course, one is constantly hunting for clicks. Click click!

"Not really that's a **** up."

But either way, it's the sort of scenario that might actually see the CEO of a major company lose his job, and is genuinely prompting consideration of a company restructuring its business.

[Wolfshade]

Well the stocks news I've heard is that it has moved from Buy to Hold, so not quite rats leaving the sinking ship.

[Deadlift]

Usually hold on shares are given by market analysts for companies that may be going through a bad period, but the share value is expected to bounce back. It stops investors from panic selling.

I suspected it may have been to prevent another company from jumping in and getting majority shares while the price is low.

That's what I've just found out anyway

[weeble1000]

[URL="http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GAW.L#symbol=gaw.l;range=1d;compare=;ind icator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalu es=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;"]GW closed up 0.1% today[/URL], but there was unusually high volume. About 500,000 shares were sold at 4 p.m. today and at 4:20 someone purchased 1.2 million shares, or roughly 3% of GW's total shares.

[weeble1000]

This is interesting in this particular context. Jonathan E. Moskin is lead counsel representing Games Workshop in the Chapterhouse Studios lawsuit.

He was quoted in an [url=http://www.corpcounsel.com/id=1202642562939/Starbucks+Plays+It+Smart+With+Dumb+Starbucks+TM%3F mcode=1202615518654&curindex=2&curpage=ALL]article about the Dumb Starbucks[/url]. I think you'll find his views quite...interesting.

Jonathan Moskin, a partner who specializes in intellectual property at Foley & Lardner, said big companies are often better off letting the infringement slide—especially if action is likely to bring negative attention. “These are usually lose-lose propositions for brand owners,” he said. “If they win, they’re seen as beating up on an artist, and if they lose, then they come away with a black eye.”

[Psychosplodge]

And what's it say behind the registration pop up?

[SquigBrain]

Our hobby is too expensive to start. and you need a certain healthy number of players in your pool in order to attract new players. No one starts a game that is as big of a commitment as this without a certain guarantee that they will be able to play with the models that they buy and spend so much time on.

This is what you call hitting the nail on the head right here. GW needs to have something along the lines of Kill Team as an honest-to-god product.

[Wolfshade]

So here we are 5 months (and several days) after GW lost 24% of it's stock value.

The thread title: Games Workshop's stock loses 24% value today. It has begun.

But the question is what was "it". The perinnial doomsayers said iot was the end of GW, but we have 7th ed 40k being released at the weekend and 9th WFB just arround the corner so there is some life left in the old gal.

Quick look at the market and what do we see:

(Based on YTD correct at the time of posting)

15/1: 723
16/1: 547 (Down 24%)

Then GW shares continued to lose value to 4/3 hitting 476.25 (35% drop from pre-drop, 13% drop day). Then a curious thing occured/ is occuring, over the last 3 months there has been steady growth in the share value, so that as of today they are at 599, so still down 13% on the YTD high, but quite good.

Times are a changin'

So what has changed between those cold January months and now?

Well, we now have a weekly WD and Visions, which seem to have been recieved well, by and large. Certainly, there are still those who want more hobby content and tutorials, but it seems to be more of a magazine again and less of a GW monthly catalogue of stuff to buy (which it still is but that is the point isn't it...).

We also have a weekly release schedule, I was very skeptical of this to begin with, especially as the weekly releases just seemed to be dataslates, now there seems to be a re-balancing between digital stuff and actual plastics, so that is good.

We also have new editions right around the corner and usually, this prompts expediture across the whole community in the way that a release for an army/codex does not. Note, each edition shift is not a har impact, as there will be those who wait for it to be released in a different format, i.e. boxed set, small, digital etc. or wait to get it for their birthday/christmas/hannuka/saturnalia. There will also be those who are lost at the edition jump. With the release being only 2 years from the previous change it is unclear how many will not bother with this edition initially and how many will just not pick up the new codex.

We also have a new website that is a huge improvement on the previous one, though there are still issues with some of the coding, commonly amongst the issues are language preferences being lost.

We also have the problem that the FAQs were lost, well shifted to BL, and these remain tired and in need of updating. Though in the benefit of hindsight it can be seen why these weren't done, as the new edition was worked on. It is still frustrating that the FAQs were not updated and the various Warhammer FB/40k fora were/are filled with threads on rules questions that require a definitive answer for GW. This still points to issues with the rules.

So we have had change, some of it good, some of it not so good and we have had the same old issues. It will be interesting to see what happens in the comming months and the next 6 month accounts.