Games Workshop 2020-2021 Financials
Games Workshop checks in with their biggest year EVER – even after last year.
We’re keeping this one pretty high level, if you want to do your own number crunching check the links below:
Games Workshop Annual Report 2020-21 – Press Announcement
Annual Report 2021 (Full Report)
Some top level numbers: (2020 vs 2021)
Revenue: +31.2%
Operating Profit (pre exceptional items & royalties) +84.9%
Operating Profit +67.7%
Earnings per share: +70.6%
Sales Channel Reports
Percent of Sales Per Channel
Retail: 20%
Trade Sales: 55%
Online (web store): 25%
Growth Percent of Sales Per Segment Constant Currency (2019-2020)
Retail: -8%
Trade Sales: +42.8%
Online (web store): +70.9%
Excerpts from the CEO:
“I’ll repeat the words from the half year, not because I’m lazy, they are still very relevant…’I’m really proud to say that I have seen Games Workshop at its very best during these uncertain times: our staff have ‘walked the walk’ with a can-do attitude offering wonderful support to their work-mates and friends. Our senior team has been on the front foot, not watching but actively managing the constant changes.
We will continue to do what is right for Games Workshop and our customers. We will focus on what is in our control; delivering on our operational plan rather than worrying about, for example, any short term share price volatility or the weather. Most days that’s making sure management is doing the right thing for Games Workshop. Ensuring that we have the right person in the right job helps enormously and this is even more important as we continue to grow and we recruit additional senior people. Our biggest risk is senior management becoming complacent. I will continue to do my best to ensure that does not happen.
I’m mindful of the uncertainty caused by COVID-19 and Brexit. Like every other company we have our internal plans as to our future performance, which show a range of outcomes which are not shared with the stock market: predicting the future is always a risky business. To help inform shareholders and followers of Games Workshop as best we can, we will continue to provide regular updates of our trading in each current year (much as we do already).’
Finally, after a tough year we are delighted that the Warhammer hobby and Games Workshop are in great shape; thanks to everyone involved and thanks to everyone that continues to keep us safe and well.”
Yearly Review
Core Business
COVID-19
“As ever, our global team has been focused on delivering a better performance, and making the Warhammer hobby ever more fun and engaging. With a challenging backdrop we have been able to deliver on our core strategy and our customers have continued to enjoy Warhammer as best they can. We look forward to the easing of restrictions, healthy and happy staff and customers, all able to engage in our full Warhammer hobby experience.
Our priorities during the year have not changed – to protect the health and safety of our staff and to do our utmost to balance the needs of all stakeholders. We have done well; supporting governments fully with their health and safety guidelines keeping people safe, our staff with job security, wellbeing support and full pay. Our customers have had considerably more free, engaging digital content and the best new miniatures we have ever made! To our disappointment, we have also had more customers’ service issues, chiefly delays on deliveries. These were primarily driven by our internal issues with capacity constraints at our warehouse facilities, rather than by external factors. To support affected customers we upscaled our customer service resource. We have continued to support our suppliers, staying loyal whenever possible and paying their invoices on time. Our shareholders have had record dividends too. Our focus on spending cash wisely has proven the right approach, we have had good cash balances throughout the year in line with our short term forecasts. We will continue to focus on improving our relationships with all stakeholders and make decisions with all in mind.”
Year to May 2021
“This has been a tough and challenging year operationally for everyone. As a global, vertically integrated business it has taken a considerable effort to keep our operational plans on track. I’d like to take the opportunity to acknowledge everyone that has helped us during these challenging times. Thanks to you all, you have been amazing.”
More Warhammer – More Often
“At our 2019 AGM we shared a new phrase ‘More Warhammer. More Often’. We believe Warhammer is immense fun, and we wanted to be clear that there are many more ways to take part than ever before and that all of them should be embraced and supported equally.
To help more people enjoy Warhammer in more ways, we a core business which focuses on realising our IP as miniatures and supporting products – the core Warhammer hobby. A licensing team which is there to enrich and expand the ways in which Warhammer fans can interact with the IP. As ever we want to make sure Warhammer is around forever and so we pick partners carefully, ones with respect for the IP and the creative vision to help strengthen and enrich it. To bridge these areas, we aim to bring everything to My Warhammer, a single source of truth for all things Warhammer. We continue to develop this platform.
The main highlight of the year for the core business was a confident global launch of our updated Warhammer 40,000 system which, given the increased volumes, tested our legacy IT systems to their maximum. They mostly passed the tests. Our relentless focus on producing the highest quality miniatures continues to deliver results. That combined with a customer focused approach helped us sell more miniatures than any year before.
The low point – at times we looked under considerable pressure, but the shared understanding of our beliefs amongst my senior team, and many others, pulled us through. Our understanding that there are no silver bullets and our attitude to hard work, and our compassion and camaraderie have never been more essential. The global team has documented and delivered an ever changing operational plan again, and it continues (I actively encourage) to be a little flexible around the edges leaving us the freedom to make changes to and explore unproven new initiatives.”
Brexit
“Since the UK referendum result on membership of the EU in June 2016, we have been working to assess and mitigate the likely impacts of Brexit on our customers and suppliers. Our fundamental objective was to ensure that we offer continuity of service and supply to our customers, wherever they are. We identified a number of key areas of focus for a potential Brexit impact, specifically:
- The movement of goods from the UK to the EU across all sales channels has faced significant disruption. We again acknowledge that unfortunately delivery service to our Continental European customers was well below expectations during the opening months of 2021. We have offered full refunds and if needed, extended credit to trade accounts whenever it was needed. Total refunds were £1.2 million in the period. We continue to monitor the impact on our trade account base as it is too early to see the impact of this disruption. It is still early days, but we now have a reliable cross border service up and running which was implemented in April 2021. We are strengthening our logistics team further with in-country resources to better support our international growth; the world seems to be getting smaller but crossing borders much harder.
- The recruitment and retention of EU nationals working in the UK has, as you would expect, not been plain sailing this year either. Our EU trade team is based in Nottingham and during the year we never really had a full team. The team we did have though are an engaging, international bunch who tackled the year with their usual lively style.”
Warhammer+
“We’re now very close to launching our bespoke subscription service, Warhammer +. This service will provide our loyal fans with a new way to experience the worlds of Warhammer and is how we will distribute the animated shows our internal Warhammer animations team have been working on. Launching with a host of animation shows, as well as all-new gaming, painting and lore shows, Warhammer + will also give subscribers access to free exclusive miniatures and more.
When we previewed Warhammer + and some of its exciting shows, it quickly became some of our most viewed content of all time. Our fans were thrilled at the opportunity to see their favourite characters and settings on screen and enjoying these new media ventures is fast becoming a core part of what it means to be a Warhammer hobbyist.”
Games Workshop 12 Month Stock Price
View Last Year’s Report For Comparison
It’s been a very good year for GW – that’s five years in a row of growth across the board, even in the midst of a global pandemic.
