Games Workshop 2013-2014 Report: Same Old Same Old

GW has released their financial report for the June 2013 to May 2014 year.  Results carry over pretty similarly from their half year results.  Sales are down ~ 8% and profits are down about ~25%.  Even though Tom Kirby is stepping down their seems to be no plans to change course.  Continue high priced product offerings with more and more sales funneled through webstore.  They plan on sticking around for the long term with no real plans to expand the player bases.  Managing the business purely for cash generation.  The did call 4.5 M pounds of expenses as exceptional (firing people only costs money this year) so that they are not counted in the 25% profit drop.  Including those yields like a profit drop of closer to 50%.

Interesting notes, they republished the trade and GW store sale breakdowns again after several years of not showing them.  I wonder if this is because the embargoes helped improve those numbers.  In the US they list, 56% trade, 13% Mail Order (Web), and 31% GW Stores.  Now remember these sales are in pounds not units.  Since GW only gets 50-60 pence on the pound from trade sales, this means that in terms of units it is 72%, 8%,  and 20% respectively.  That there 100 stores localized in limited areas can generate 20% of their sales in the US is pretty impressive or it could indicate the the trade sales have really fallen recently.

Another thing to see is that while overall sales were down ~8%, internal sales were down 15% from product and supply.  This indicates that the average mark up of the products increased which is probably a combination of lower trade sales and the new limited edition products.

GW notes that they cut management levels down essentially removing middle management.  Each store manager now reports to 1 manager for the region (Europe, UK, and NA).  All of the trade sales team reports to 1 guy located in the UK.  This is cost cutting but might be a cool aid problem since there will probably be no one with different ideas with such thin ranks.  They seem to always be referring to the risks of their employees like a group is going to up and quite to start their own miniatures company.

When we look over the last year GW should have had strong sales, they did new space marines, the knight, and released 7th edition for 40K just in time for all the presales and initial deliveries to fall into this report.  It is important to note though that the year they are comparing to also had 6th edition released since that was released in the summer of 2012 which falls into the 2012-2013 year that this is compared to.  I wonder how bad the numbers would have been if they had not pushed that release up into May and left it in the normal summer release window.

I am sort of disappointed after reading the preamble yesterday, I was expecting some more interesting stuff.

This is Just Incredible

Back40K is providing a link to Kirby's Preamble to GW Year 2013-2014 financials that appear to be coming tomorrow.  If you have any interest in the goings on at GW you need to read this.  If reads like someone giving people the middle finger as he walks out the door.

Ugh

 I honestly do not know what more to say.

Well maybe that the new ships look like

Lego Hobbit: Lonely Mountain Preview

Lego is previewing the Lonely Mountain set at San Diego Comic Con this week.  This set is pretty expensive even as license sets go at $129.99 for 860 or so pieces.  You get 5 minifigures, dwarf mine and throne room scenery and Smaug. Smaug is about twice as big as the dragon in the recent castle Dragon Mountain set but unfortunately he is not brick built, instead made with large custom molds.  He seems bigger than the Rancor from the Star Wars line and does not look bad but not very Lego like which is a real disappointment.

X-Wing Miniatures: Imperial Aces

Up for inspection is the Imperial Aces expansion set for the X-Wing Miniatures Game.  It is essentially buy two tie interceptors and get nothing free.  That is not entirely true but lets see what we have in the box.

Full LRB 6 Book Up on Cyanide Site

Cyanide is nice enough to be hosting a full version of the LRB 6 Blood Bowl Rules right now as GW has disavowed the game.  Since the GW website reboot the official copy of the rules have not been found on the GW site.  Hopefully fans have downloads of all the rulebooks that used to be up their for their games.  I know that I have copies of Blood Bowl, Epic, and Dark Future but would have like a copy of Mordheim and Necromunda also which I never downloaded.

The Blood Bowl version hosted by Cyanide has the art, diagrams, background sections and also has the Chaos Pact, Slann, and Underworld teams right there in the team roster section.  Most complete version I have seen so go get yourself some rules.

Reaper Shows a Pile of Bones II Samples

Reaper finally showed off some production samples in their most recent Kickstarter Update for the Bones II kickstarter.  Hopefully they have left themselves time to actually inspect the samples to prevent the clearly bad molds from the first kickstarter from reoccuring.

Stormclaw and Future Campaign Box Sets

So GW tried something different this past week to attract hobbyist's attention.  They put up for pre order a limited release campaign box with a mini rulebook, slim scenerio book, and some existing sprues with 2 limited edition plastic characters.  I will admit that I am intrigued by this move.  I have no interest in the set as I only have vanilla marines and nids and have negative interest in starting any other armies for a game I have not played in a few years now but as I GW watcher I try to keep an eye on what is happening.

D&D Basic Available for Download

Wizards of the Coast has been nice enough to put some of the D&D Basic rules up for download.  It looks to be essentially the player guide part and measures in at 110 pages.  From my quick glance through, it looks much more like a simplified 3rd edition than anything like 4th.  It seems like yesterday that we were determining THAC0's.  Oh well, I had some 4th stuff and never played so I will probably just read this download and file it away for the future.

Crazy Ukraine Traffic

Anyone else on Blogger seeing crazy traffic out of Ukraine.  I have gotten 3 times more accesses from Ukraine in the last day than the rest of the world combined.