Network News: 2015 August-September GW Market Watch

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Network News is rated: trending land of make believe importance for this blog

Watching stocks over the short-term is often an experiment in futility; on September 2nd 2015 we looked back at the state of Games Workshop’s stock price and general financial health.

As the third quarter quickly comes to a close we finally we see light at the end of the Age of Sigmar tunnel. How the Sigmar sale figures effect the future profits of the company we won’t know until the next annual report. In the meantime, the last month wasn’t without some interesting news. There was some stock purchases by the Kirby clan and the CEO. Then there was the pretty public Annual General Meeting, which took place in the redesigned Warhammer World.

Before we get to all the gory details of the meeting, let us see if the China Crash and other world pressures would have an affect on their stock price. As it was, September is usually a bad month for many companies and GW wasn’t any different.

Here see what I mean…

The stock took a dive of almost 7% over the last month. You just cannot expect GW not to be dragged down by the major market uncertainties appearing globally.

With that in mind how are things looking year over year?

GW stock is currently down 10% from last year. I don’t think it is going to look much better going forward, especially if recent history is any indication.

As I alluded to earlier GW did have a AGM, and we got a report from one of the shareholders with his take on things. This article provided quite a bit of discussion on various forums over the last month, if you haven’t read it is really worth the read.

http://www.iii.co.uk/news-opinion/richard-beddard/games-workshop-agm%3A-relentless-profit-machine

The title is a little misleading, especially if your perspective is that of a long time GW hobbyists. The details of the article are impressive, and comes from a person who understands more than just the “numbers”. The comparisons between GW and X-Wing are spot on, and at least GW is aware of the popularity of the Star Wars game. It seems like GW is also just as intransigent to their share holders as the online community. The biggest bombshell though is GW belief that only 20% of their customers, buy the models for the game. This insane number pulled from thin air (remember they don’t do market research) goes to show the business culture at Games Workshop still has a lot of work to do.