GW PLC Trading Update - 22nd November, 2024

[Vassakov]

Thank you for your kind words, Brother N1SB - and an interesting side note to the media reporting (and this could be because most places are just pulling from the AP or whatever) but whilst most of the reports note the significant growth in licensing revenue, none have actually mentioned Space Marine II, which seems like a bit of an oversight. It's unlikely that revenue returns next year, as I'm not aware of any major new licencing projects in the works. Although, if our good colleague Valrak is right on what's coming for 40k next year, maybe that is offset a little bit. We'll see.

 

On costs - I'm going to try very, very hard to refrain from dipping into non-board approved topics. However, the cost of running a business in the UK is going to go up over the next year or so, perhaps fairly substantially. Sadly, these costs are going to be passed onto consumers. Bad for you abroad, very bad for us here in the UK I'm afraid.

 

 Finally, UK Planning Law... sorry N1SB, but but this is my area of interest. Essentially, UK planning is spectacularly and miserably fragmented, with Local Planning Authorities holding very significant influence. In practice, this means a handful of councillors, usually backed by interest groups, can stall or even kill major economic developments for seemingly trivial reasons. The ability of Government to overrule them is limited - just look at the utter Horlicks that's been made of HS2. Now, I'm not massively up to date on Nottingham's Local Plan or specific planning policies, but I did hear that at one stage the challenge was grid capacity (it may even have been from one of your analyses, N1SB!) If that's the case, then they are in real trouble as UK energy generation is not in a good place, and again likely to get worse before it gets better. It's an area where Government lobbying might help, but also where Government policy is causing some of the issues. 

[N1SB]

Nono, you're right, it's the local authorities, district councils that CONTROL all this, isn't it?  The CEOs definitely weigh in when The (national) Government want to look like they're supporting UK businesses and the overall economy, but you're right, it's something at the national level like...import or export policy.

It was someone else that pointed out the grid, I remember that, too, I was right there by you.  It's the rising energy costs that I hammered on, because this will be an ongoing issue.  It was after reading this OECD report, I noticed all the fastest recovering countries had a thing in common: they had some energy independence.  

 

And what you said how the newspapers only notice this spike in licensing revenue, but not that it's from Space Marine II is so spot on.  This Guardian article wanted to talk about a box of AoS Chaos Knights rather than that.  It's important...because it's not like a constant licensing stream of revenue, it'll only come again with Space Marine III.

 

Edit - I actually didn't mind the Guardian as a newspaper, but I also think they made a massive oversight.

 

If I ever seem riled up on these topics...usually I'm really mad at how bad business journalists are.  To give everyone a feel of it, it's like being in school, I used to think journalists just wanted to copy my homework.  What happens instead is they didn't even bother copying my homework, they just want to gossip behind our backs.

Edited December 5, 2024 by N1SB

[Vassakov]

So I decided to go digging through the planning application - from what I can gather, there shouldn't be any reason to refuse it. It's on developed industrial land, and involves the demolition of an older building that doesn't seem to have any real heritage value. However, it's been in the system for about 6 months now and could easily be another six months before final approval. All that having been said, it shouldn't be the most complex application to deal with - there are limited biodiversity issues, they don't have to make significant contributions in the way that house builders do.

 

So that circles back around to the capacity issue - which, to an extent, is out of their hands. They might be able to effectively pay to have additional substation infrastructure installed if that's the issue, but that could be more than the cost of the factory (which is in itself bananas.)

 

And N1SB... it's not business journalists. It's just most journalists these days, sadly. 

[phandaal]

10 hours ago, N1SB said:

And there has been a precedent...the launch of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, that's what I'll talk about soon.

 

Not sure what specifics you are intending to talk about here, but the popularity of LotR minis seemed to draw on people who already liked fantasy wargaming, not necessarily the average person who went to the theater.

 

As you will recall, wargaming was much less popular than it is now, but fantasy was popular among wargamers in the ancient days of Y2K. So us turbo nerds who were even more excited about LotR than the average person had the opportunity to purchase miniatures for another hobby we already enjoyed (and by extension, were used to pricing).

[Cactus]

Great analysis all round, as usual. However @N1SB I think you slipped up in a small way. The UK's Chancellor is a lady so she lives next to the PM etc.

[ZeroWolf]

Saw this link (think you need a sub to read all of it, but I could read most of it) on my Google homepage and thought it appropriate to the discussion about GW joining the FTSE 100. Hilarious thing is the picture at the top shows decidedly non-gw miniatures...unless GW got the rights back to D&D with none of us noticing 

[Ramell]

29 minutes ago, ZeroWolf said:

Saw this link (think you need a sub to read all of it, but I could read most of it) on my Google homepage and thought it appropriate to the discussion about GW joining the FTSE 100. Hilarious thing is the picture at the top shows decidedly non-gw miniatures...unless GW got the rights back to D&D with none of us noticing 

Maybe they're still living in the days when GW was the distributor for D&D in the UK. 

[Dark Shepherd]

3 hours ago, ZeroWolf said:

Saw this link (think you need a sub to read all of it, but I could read most of it) on my Google homepage and thought it appropriate to the discussion about GW joining the FTSE 100. Hilarious thing is the picture at the top shows decidedly non-gw miniatures...unless GW got the rights back to D&D with none of us noticing 

Based on current share price GW is worth more than £4.5 billion or almost $6 billion

 

Nuln Oil is catching up on crude oil

[Progenitor]

15 hours ago, Dark Shepherd said:

Nuln Oil is catching up on crude oil

Don't tempt them! 

[Gillyfish]

At least it isn't printer ink...

 

Circling back to an earlier point about commentary on the licensing element and the lack of reference to Space Marine II in GW's success this year, I did note that the Financial Times did talk about licensing being an important but 'lumpy' revenue stream for GW due to a lack of predictability (which I take to mean that some of the licensed stuff is good and some of it is, er, not...). Now, I may be wrong, but I am not sure that Space Marine II's profits would have shown up in the reported profits yet as I would expect to see that in next year's audited accounts, but someone who knows accounting better than I do might be able to correct me on that one.

[Dark Shepherd]

Just watched Valraks vid on this

 

Him calling it the FTSE ah hundred index rather the FTSE 100 index was the most northern thing ever outside of a Jack Russel in a pub wearing a flat cap :)

 

My monocle nearly fell off laughing

 

 

Edited December 17, 2024 by Dark Shepherd

[Emperor Ming]

5 minutes ago, Dark Shepherd said:

My monocle nearly fell off laughing

Monacle you say