(Discussion) GW Half-Yearly Financial Report, Space Marine II launch, pricing update flags

[darkhorse0607]

On 1/17/2025 at 5:56 AM, TheArtilleryman said:

I get it about the discounts (all 4 of your great points), but I don’t get it about not returning the stock to the warehouse. They wouldn’t have to be all public about this at all, just quietly return it to the central stock pool and send it to stores that need it, or sell it online. Especially if it’s a whole store full of stock being written off like the Hong Kong example and not just a few random boxes.

 

I mean the problem is, to facilitate that you'd have to have a lot of confidence in your distribution and inventory systems, which given the amount of stuff that goes wrong on a routine basis (sending the wrong item which leads to leaks, over/under forecasting, etc), I don't think they have

 

I do wonder if they allow Store Managers to do back channel deals with each other though, to help their inventory levels

[N1SB]

On 1/17/2025 at 6:45 AM, Sky Potato said:

 

I would probably agree that - on the balance of probability - Imperium Magazine was made up of excess stock from the second run of the Indomitus boxset. Its probably worth mentioning that the original partworks magazine, Conquest, was definitely made to order for the magazine. The sprues were the regular off the shelf sprues, but in coloured plastic - blue for the Marines, green for the Death Guard, brown for the terrain. So the original plan for the partworks was not a method of coping with overstock.

 

On 1/17/2025 at 6:53 AM, ZeroWolf said:

It's been pointed out that the stock for all magazines (and army deals) are all printed to order rather than surplus stock as it really doesn't cost them much to do it and saves time rather than having someone manually unbox things (to say nothing about the probability that they'd need to still print some sprues to match shortfall).

 

The simple answer (and maybe most wasteful?) Is they simply print them.

 

You were totally right, lol.  So 8th ed, the tinted sprues, dead giveaway.  Wasn't so sure with 9th.

 

I fished out my 9th ed Recruit Edition and Imperium magazine with Necrons, seeking to prove you WRONG.

 

The Necron sprues in the Imperium magazine were clearly different.  Only had the single-barrel gauss guns.

 

You're totally right.  And manually reboxing stuff makes total sense IN CHINA or where labour's cheap.

 

So I dunno what's up anymore, mystery is not solved, case is re-opened.  But we still now know write-downs are a thing.

[N1SB]

On 1/17/2025 at 6:32 AM, TheArtilleryman said:

We recently took the trip to Warhammer World in Nottingham. My son had £100 of birthday money to spend but despite a long time browsing he didn’t buy anything because of the prices. Even being in actual Warhammer World with every model you can possibly think of in front of him, he was like “nah, I can get it cheaper online.”

 

This great.  The term is "fiscal discipline" but this is just proper respect for money.  Whether it's £100 or £100,000, same winning mindset.

 

Good job instilling this into your kids.  It's hard to teach, gotta lead by example.  Was it your eldest or your middle son?

Edited January 19 by N1SB

[N1SB]

3 hours ago, darkhorse0607 said:

I do wonder if they allow Store Managers to do back channel deals with each other though, to help their inventory levels

 

You're right, it might not be GW-wide policy, it might just be our region.  Ours absolutely does this, as his regional colleagues.

 

It might be a teamwork thing.  East Asians, very communal management style.  It's to a point where we're in Hong Kong, we got lots of Mainland Chinese tourists, our store manager might push business back to Mainland China instead of closing the sale himself.  Like we had a little Shanghainese business lady, we SO sold her on Warhammer for her son, but she's pretty petite and we didn't want to haul a YUGE box back, our redshirt literally gave her the business card for the Shanghai store...she still wanted to buy from him.

 

It might also be a turn-a-blind-eye thing.  It was the Middle Earth game's new edition, I put in an order for the Dead Men of Dunharrow (you know how Warhammer Stores don't stock much LotR stuff), our redshirt looked at the demo set that he was painting up that included those very Oathbreakers, turned to me and said, "Yo hol' up Imma get you a box."  He basically gave me the Dead Men sprues from the demo set, so I can paint them up right away, then he'd take my order and replenish his demo models.

 

(The best part, he actually found a LotR box, like he was recreating the entire experience.  All I missed was the baggie for the bases, lol.)

 

So with the Dead Men from the demo set, he probably violated all sorts of GW policy, not selling but giving an advance with the sacred demo models.  But it was to delight a customer AND it made no material difference, since he couldn't paint the demo set that fast, and then he got me to demo the game with him in front of other customers.

 

AND...you know, all successful salesperson do stuff they're not supposed to anyway.  Because if they followed every rule, that person would make zero sales.

[TheArtilleryman]

4 hours ago, N1SB said:

 

This great.  The term is "fiscal discipline" but this is just proper respect for money.  Whether it's £100 or £100,000, same winning mindset.

 

Good job instilling this into your kids.  It's hard to teach, gotta lead by example.  Was it your eldest or your middle son?

Middle son, 14. Can’t say it’s direct teaching but it’s the same thing I do so I guess I’ll take some credit :)

[ZeroWolf]

7 hours ago, N1SB said:

 

 

You were totally right, lol.  So 8th ed, the tinted sprues, dead giveaway.  Wasn't so sure with 9th.

 

I fished out my 9th ed Recruit Edition and Imperium magazine with Necrons, seeking to prove you WRONG.

 

The Necron sprues in the Imperium magazine were clearly different.  Only had the single-barrel gauss guns.

 

You're totally right.  And manually reboxing stuff makes total sense IN CHINA or where labour's cheap.

 

So I dunno what's up anymore, mystery is not solved, case is re-opened.  But we still now know write-downs are a thing.

It's a funny thing, looking at it from the outside, it makes sense to us that they would re-box product as it would clear out old stock and allow some money to be made. However turns out that businesses have a logic all their own.

 

Not that this should be a surprise, how many times have we been saying GW should take an obvious course of action (be it  businesses decision, a lore decision or game development decision) only for them to avoid it and do something completely different. The business world is like narina to me sometimes!

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

Competition and a terrible web store and big stock issues hurting them online. If people go elsewhere surely GW is aware that they will also then be exposed to other gaming systems, most of which are much cheaper?

 

Throwing away so much stock. So wasteful and just another example of how abhorrent capitalism really is. 

[Dark Shepherd]

23 hours ago, The Praetorian of Inwit said:

Competition and a terrible web store and big stock issues hurting them online. If people go elsewhere surely GW is aware that they will also then be exposed to other gaming systems, most of which are much cheaper?

 

Throwing away so much stock. So wasteful and just another example of how abhorrent capitalism really is. 

I tried to look at brown contrast paints on the webstore the other day. The site basically insisted I look at spray paints or bust, if I went via paint menu. If I searched contrast I got 6 random paints. Its :cuss:

[Dark Shepherd]

GW broke their share price record again last week, close to £143 per share, valueing company at almost £4.75 billion/$5.9 billion

 

From what I can tell, Directors and major.shareholders have been sitting on their stock since late 2023

[Vassakov]

https://investor.games-workshop.com/news-posts/tradingupdate050325

 

Small update, GW continues to do very well.

 

Suspect that will not please the people who want them to change direction, as it is clearly working for them.

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

That's impressive actually. Usually peoples spending is lower with the hangover from Christmas. Maybe people in USA making purchases to avoid future tariffs? 

 

Aeldari and DK must have done well for the core business. 

[Sky Potato]

Don’t forget that they’ve only said “that trading in January and February has been ahead of expectations”, rather than published numbers. They could still say that if the post-Christmas spend was down by 33% instead of 35% (for example, I have no idea what the actual numbers are).

 

Very impressive though - especially as GW must be one of the only companies who don’t do some kind of post-Christmas sale.

 

I doubt the threat of future tariffs will be driving this - they’ve only really been raised as a potential issue for the last few weeks of that January-February period.

 

I wonder if they count the pre-order day of Saturday 01 March for the Emperors Children boxset in that period - other than that, the main releases in that time are the Krieg boxset, the Eldar refresh, and Empire and High Elf boxsets for Old World.

Edited March 7 by Sky Potato
Fixed formatting

[TheArtilleryman]

54 minutes ago, Sky Potato said:

GW must be one of the only companies who don’t do some kind of post-Christmas sale.

They never do sales, period. I think the last and only time they did a sale was in 1999 when they did 3 for 2 on box sets. That was an awesome day and the queues down Friar Lane in Nottingham were epic. I waited years for it to happen again and it never did :sad face:

[Dark Shepherd]

1 hour ago, TheArtilleryman said:

They never do sales, period. I think the last and only time they did a sale was in 1999 when they did 3 for 2 on box sets. That was an awesome day and the queues down Friar Lane in Nottingham were epic. I waited years for it to happen again and it never did :sad face:

They did a very limited/partial webstore sale about 18-24 months ago but that was it. Arguably the blind boxes/supply crates are as close to a sale as they regularly get

 

Being a UK not EU company means they fly in under the US radar for tarriffs (I think)

[Sky Potato]

2 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

They never do sales, period. I think the last and only time they did a sale was in 1999 when they did 3 for 2 on box sets. That was an awesome day and the queues down Friar Lane in Nottingham were epic. I waited years for it to happen again and it never did :sad face:

 

I remember going to a GW store opening somewhere in London which co-incided with the launch of GorkaMorka. There was a 50% sale happening at the same time - I remember my dad asking it if it was worth buying a load of extra boxes and selling them on.

[Emperor Ming]

3 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

They never do sales, period. I think the last and only time they did a sale was in 1999 when they did 3 for 2 on box sets. That was an awesome day and the queues down Friar Lane in Nottingham were epic. I waited years for it to happen again and it never did :sad face:

The gold barges have sails does that count

[TheArtilleryman]

1 hour ago, Sky Potato said:

 

I remember going to a GW store opening somewhere in London which co-incided with the launch of GorkaMorka. There was a 50% sale happening at the same time - I remember my dad asking it if it was worth buying a load of extra boxes and selling them on.

Dang, 50%, was that on everything? That’s staff discount zone, insane

[darkhorse0607]

17 hours ago, The Praetorian of Inwit said:

Maybe people in USA making purchases to avoid future tariffs

 

While I don't think it's the biggest factor here I do think it's an element

 

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail because I don't want to venture into the politics side but tariffs have been discussed since November and before. While those discussions weren't more concrete (at least as concrete as they're going to be for how it's going) it could have pushed more than a few to make purchases they were sitting on for goods that come from outside of the US

 

Anecdotally, even in my conversations with my gf the discussion has changed from

 

"Oh this is a cool model but I'll wait" (insert supportive gf comment) like I had for most of last year, before I go to try and buy it but it's out of stock

 

To

 

"Oh this is a cool model" with my gfs response of "you better buy it before it's gone or 15-20-25% more expensive. Or it's out of stock. Or GW raises the price again"

 

Like I said I'm not saying it's the biggest factor here. I'd venture christmas spending, steam sales on SM2 for the winter season, etc are more impactful. But I wouldn't be surprised if some have picked up more kits than they normally would due to the uncertainty

[Sky Potato]

I've absolutely no idea! I remember queuing around the block to get in, and I remember getting a lot more than I was expecting to get out of my dad due to the sale being such a big discount, but I sadly don't really remember the terms and conditions.

 

It was the best part of 30 years ago - since then I've discovered that I'm really good at beer and I've spent my entire professional career working in environments that aren't particularly brain friendly, shall we say 

[Xenith]

I presume the write-downs would be repackaginf of sprues into battleforces and the like? The recent blood angels box has 2x assault intercessor kits and 2x jump intercessor kits in the set, as epople probably realised they can just use their old assault marines once that unit was removed from the dex. Lots of stuff is getting the Reiver treatment! 

[N1SB]

This is just a minor reminder of a nuance in these reports, it's the cut-off dates:

 

 

Although we see the Half-Yearly Report mid-January, the accounting period actually ends late November/early December.

 

For example, it did NOT include, say, the big 2024 Christmas Battleforces NOR the Steam Winter Sales for Space Marine II.

 

On that note:

 

30 minutes ago, Xenith said:

I presume the write-downs would be repackaginf of sprues into battleforces and the like? The recent blood angels box has 2x assault intercessor kits and 2x jump intercessor kits in the set, as epople probably realised they can just use their old assault marines once that unit was removed from the dex. Lots of stuff is getting the Reiver treatment! 

 

...I think that's EXACTLY it now.  Christmas Battleforces and sometimes they repackage a bunch of 2 factions' sprues with a new unique model for both sides.  I remember people speculating with our Warhammer Store Manager who used to do marketing for a fashion firm about what Battleforces and someone suggested something, and he was like, "Naw, those models have been selling too well," and he didn't have insider knowledge from Nottingham, but his point was the purpose of those bundles was to move underperforming SKUs.  Like they're not bad models, but they had fallen short of whatever forecasts GW corporate expected.

 

TL;DR my point...remember Christmas, the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, GW might've had a really good Xmas.

 

 

+++++

 

Yo my question to you guys pls, last few months, like from December onwards, what's been overperforming in YOUR meta?

 

There's been a huge uptick and uptake of Legions Imperialis here, and just recently Warhammer Underworlds (the AoS skirmish game what with the cards).  40k 10th ed just receded a bit, but people really love Legions Imperialis not just because of Epic but also they feel it's really strategic with alternative activations, to the point they say they wish that's what 40k was like.

 

Just curious, because Legiones was kinda dormant for a few months, now all our regulars already have their armies here.

[Robbienw]

6 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

They never do sales, period. I think the last and only time they did a sale was in 1999 when they did 3 for 2 on box sets. That was an awesome day and the queues down Friar Lane in Nottingham were epic. I waited years for it to happen again and it never did :sad face:

 

They did sales in the 90's where you'd get those colourful 3 blisters for 2 coupons.

 

Last sale i remember them doing was in feb/march 2000.  Loads of epic and BFG on sale, i got 6 boxes of imperial cruisers for £2 each.  Fun times.

[ZeroWolf]

1 hour ago, Xenith said:

I presume the write-downs would be repackaginf of sprues into battleforces and the like? The recent blood angels box has 2x assault intercessor kits and 2x jump intercessor kits in the set, as epople probably realised they can just use their old assault marines once that unit was removed from the dex. Lots of stuff is getting the Reiver treatment! 

If I recall a conversation I heard at my local GW, They don't repackage stock, it's far cheaper for them to just print out more then paying for people to move sprues from one box to another.  Plus realistically, they'll be printing out more sprues anyway as the left overs aren't going to be the same quantity as each other. Just seems easier printing everything out to order.

[RWJP]

I've come to the conversation about write-downs late so I might have missed something that makes my next point completely irrelevant, but bear with me:

Could the write-downs have anything to do with the mini of the month?

We all know the conversation point of the costs associated with making new injection moulding tooling. For the majority of the mini of the month stuff, we get a single mini on a unique sprue. Sometimes the mini itself is just a direct copy of one available in the full kit, but the fact it comes on it's own sprue means that GW has had separate tooling made to produce that single sprue. As the minis produced from that tooling are then given away for free, GW isn't getting any direct revenue whatsoever to offset the cost of making the tooling.

Obviously, the whole point of the mini of the month is to get revenue by getting people to come into store "Oh yeah, while I am here, I'll pick up some paint/brushes/that kit I wanted" but technically speaking would GW not just be writing off the cost of the tooling for these minis?

[N1SB]

18 hours ago, RWJP said:

Could the write-downs have anything to do with the mini of the month?

 

I was going to ask aren't the Freebie-Minis-of-the-Month always new models they're promoting?

 

Then I remembered I just got Skaven, in fact not 1 but 2 Skaven, like last month.  So not new.

 

So I agree you're probably right, this is at least ONE of perhaps multiple things.  The only way we're wrong is if they do some weird accounting, because like you say that model is no longer a product to sell but a promotional tool, thus no longer considered inventory.  But marketing premiums -should- still be inventory.

 

(Ok that sounded technical, so I'll put it this way: why is a Space Marine Dreadnought usually listed as Elite and not Heavy Support like other Vehicles?  Because...it's a Dreadnought, it's always been Elite!  But the Deredo Dreadnought is Heavy Support.  You see how things can accounted in different categories?  It's like that.  GW has things in the Gross Profit Margin section that I don't understand why they're there, so this isn't new.)

Edited March 9 by N1SB