Hey all! Just recently, I googled Games Workshop (I can never remember how their address is written...), and noticed the stock info on the right side of the search results. If you click their stock name (GAW in London stock), you can find Google Finance portrayal of their stock development in up to ten years. Here's a graph it showed: I can say that I know next to nothing about stock exchange. But there were two huge and almost vertical drops in those ten years (red circle and the date was added by me). Any ideas what might have caused that, especially the more recent one, January 2014? The stock seems to sink a bit after Christmas, which is understandable, but I'm somewhat fresh to Warhammer and can't really place any big events that coincides with the drops. Was there a new edition of a game system or significant price increase? Any other ideas? And like I said, I don't know much about stocks, so this is just for fun/curiosity's sake...
This coincides with Qupakoco shipping the fabulous Lustria-Online Dice. All serious LM players in the world had no money left to buy white dwarf magazine. Shares in Qupakoco industries went UP by a commensurate amount.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't 2005 the last year of the LOTR trilogy? Or coincides with release of War of the Ring? Whatever the case it is likely connected with the previous years financial results released at that time, so you should be able to dig out the report. I do remember something about GW stock plummeting at the start of the year. It was due to their profit announcement, which was significantly lower than expected. Again, explanations should be in this year's report.
I'm not a stock expert by no means but the drops may have nothing to with the company sales. I think you would want to compare the chart with a standard index for that exchange. For example in the New York Exchange you could use NASDAQ, S&P 500, Dow Jones, etc to compare against (generally you would want to compare against an index that coincides closest with the industry you are looking at, I have no idea what that may be for Games Workshop). So the drops may just be results of a large reduction (recession) of stock values within the entire exchange (like what the US had in 2007-2008). But if you compare it to an index for that industry/market you would see how it was fairing within that market. Otherwise you would need to check the companies public financial statements if you want to know if sales were up or down (Note that companies will always try to make their financial statements look good so you would really need to know your stuff to see the real story). Again, I'm not a stock expert nor do I work in finance so if I'm wrong on something here please correct me.
I googled for GW's financial statement for this year, it was the same one The Escapist Magazine (one referenced in that Under Empire thread) was talking about. It was very weird to read. Clearly, as dreitman said, the statement was done so that it would look good for the investors and shareholders and it was difficult to pick much out of all that financial talk. It was understandable, thought, that they now deemed suing the people or companies for IP infringements as pointless ("Too much waste for too little gain") and that they need to strengthen their own IP. Also the changes in sale system (the webstore wanting to sell their products must have an actual physical shop as well) was partly blamed for the drop in January, as was declining North American sales (which coincided with the removal of North American "autonomy" and placing the headquarter in Nottingham in responsibility for all the functions in NA...). They went lengths about how they want to produce the best models out there for a niche market. But, I didn't find anything about rules for those models, further strengthening the GW's image as a model maker, not a game designer (and weakening my hope of us finally getting some good FAQs). Sigh, I just don't understand the model of GW's operations. I see why they want to give the potential players a place where they can get their first contacts with the games (thus the preference to physical stores), but why are they so against webstores? Aren't sales good? If they think that buying from an internet store makes you abandon GW quicker, then they should strengthen other areas that alienate people. Like their rules making. And why do they hate Australia and New Zealand so much? Thanks for everyone for contributing, and to Bob for sharing that Under Empire link. I'll see what those rats have to say about it.