GW 2014-2015 Half Year Results

[Caitsidhe]

£400,000 drop in takings at constant currency.

Profits up.

Yep. It's the end of days fo' sho'.

Interesting bit - CEO is promising a full review of their products, then says 'I'm not lowering prices, but ensuring we have a reasonable spread of price points'.

As one of life's little optimists - could mean new kits at a cheaper price point as a sort of 'Tesco Value' range?

Sales down. Yes you can try to spin that by cutting to the bone, trying to blame ephemeral factors, and other funny twists. Sales are still down, again. I am predicting another drop in said sales. As to your being an optimist, don't you kind of have to be? I am interested in your view though. If they are not lowering prices, exactly what dos a reasonable spread of price points mean. Can you explain this cheaper price point Tesco Value range?

[Psychosplodge]

He means a budget range. Like maybe a snap fit sprue or something that's maybe half the price but a lot more basic.

[Mr Mystery]

Down by £400,000. Or a fraction of 1%. Help help the sky are felled on my noggins!

As for optimism - it's genuinely me in real life, it's not a 'Hobby Only' thing.

And I'll do my best to explain the Tesco Value concept. I'll start by quoting the relevant passage from the report, so we're all on the same page....

Secondly, I will review our product range. We believe this is long overdue; it is time for a resetting of the ranges. Not tweaking here and there but a top down reassessment. I expect to update you further at the half year. We will aim to continue to deliver outstanding product and customer service, maintain our Group gross margin and continue to improve our Group stock turn. To be absolutely clear I will not be reducing the RRP of our products: they are premium priced for their premium quality. I will, however, be looking to offer a broader range of price points. This is exciting and is for the long term, so I'm not promising when you will see a change. We have already started the brainstorming in our monthly strategic product meetings. It is early days, but I can already foresee some busy times ahead

Bold emphasis mine.

First up, let's not get into the emotive language used by Mr Rountree - this is to be expected, and whether you agree or not with his description is entirely moot.

So, the bit in bold.... I'm speculating that we might see different sculpts of different units at different price points. Best example I can offer now would be some kind of return to monopose. Think [url=http://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Space-Marines]push fit Marines[/url], sold alongside the standard Tactical Squad, at a cheaper price. This opens up different price point avenues to playing - which many have claimed is the single biggest issue GW face.

And if I'm mangling my words (struggling at work today to. Just cannot get my thoughts down on paper ) here's the briefest way I can think of.

Tactical Marines, additional simplified set released alongside. Current remains at current pricepoint of £25.00. Pushfit No Options 'Value' brand released, £15.00, both sold side by side.

But this is just speculation - the quote itself even suggests they're not completely sure what this is going to look like yet, as they're at the brainstorm stage.

[Path Walker]

Sales down. Yes you can try to spin that by cutting to the bone, trying to blame ephemeral factors, and other funny twists. Sales are still down, again. I am predicting another drop in said sales. As to your being an optimist, don't you kind of have to be? I am interested in your view though. If they are not lowering prices, exactly what dos a reasonable spread of price points mean. Can you explain this cheaper price point Tesco Value range?

They obviously would like more sales but they seem happy to be a premium brand with costs to match, lower sales also means lower overheads, it might not be beneficial to get more sales when it comes at the expense of profits and seeing as how profits are up, this would appear to be the case. Obviously there are a lot of factors to this but generally, they're in a good position, they're looking to expand into other market places again.

A spread of price points is because currently, most of their kits are in the £20- £70 range, nothing much lower any more, so they'll want to look at things like the simple troops boxes at "pocket money" prices they had a few years back that have slowly gone out of the shops

[Mr Mystery]

Oh they're still there, at least online. But seriously - wtf is anyone going to usefully do with a box of three Tactical Marines, unless buying them to pad out a Devastator set by replacing Tac Marines in other squads, the originals having been armed with more serial dakka.

But otherwise yeah - that's my speculation. But we shall have to wait and see.

As for the £400,000 takings? Report says much of that is down to changes in how some items are distributed, including magazines. And it's a fairly small amount given their constant currency is £120,000,000 odd.

[Caitsidhe]

Hrm. Ok. We shall see. I have no problem waiting for the next report to see how it comes out "again"... If their current course (and the AOS stuff) doesn't reverse the direction, it will be interesting to see what kind of spin that gets. I'm a money where your mouth is kind of guy and I absolutely feel there will be no effective bump whatsoever from AOS. In fact, I expect another decrease in sales. Mr. Path Walker in another location called this cutting the dead weight from the customer base. I found this entire notion hilarious because in general you don't want to cut ANY of the customer base. Even people who only buy a little bit are buying things. Some sales are better than no sales from an individual customer.

Apparently cutting this dead weight is viewed as somehow allowing all these other, previously non-existent customers to spring forth from the ground fertilized, no doubt, by the blood of the sacrificed dead weight? I digress. Is should leave having fun with Path Walker logic for another time and place. I've put my predictions down. Let's hear from you optimists. How about you put some numbers behind the bravado.

[Psychosplodge]

As much as it pains me to agree with Caitsidhe I doubt they'd set out to deliberately shrink their customer base

[Mr Mystery]

If your customer isn't spending, then they're not a customer.

This is part of the issue with the success of GW. Long term players, whilst happy to buy large armies, have less incentive to buy new stuff.

I'm a regular Warhammer gamer, including with AoS - yet until End Times came upon us, I hadn't really bought anything apart from Army Books (excellent reading for when you're on the Porcelain Throne) for a good couple of years. But with AoS, I'm feeling reinvigorated, as I can now whack together any collection into a fieldable army - and I spent £184.00 this month alone doing just that. Now, whether that's sustained we'll of course have to wait and see, but it's certainly proving popular in my neck of the woods at the moment.

A further decrease in sales I can't agree on. Again only local knowledge, but more of my gaming associates have been buying stuff recently, and with some form of plastic HH just around the corner, I expect that will only increase (certainly I'm seeing HH more favourably because of it - I don't especially like small resin kits, as I find them to fiddly for my strangler's hands. So plastic infantry means I only need to do resin on larger, vehicular kits for the most part, which I'm more confident on).

[grimmas]

A tiny drop perhaps down to the fact that I suspect people may not have been buying WFB very much in the last few months in the year due to uncertainty over where the game was going. Also lets not forget the problems occurring in the Eurozone not just the currency conversion issues but also that people are likely to spend less on luxuries when their money is being devalued.

An increase in profit is only ever a good thing and as the restructuring happened 2 years ago now it's pretty obvious it was a success.

Yep GW is in good shape they've trimmed the fat got consolidated and if AoS is anything to go by they started to innovate again.

Sorry folks no imminent death in sight.

[Mr Mystery]

Wonder if anyone on Dakkadakka has accused them of cooking their books again, like some kind of Nerd ENRON?