So, Tastey Taste and I were having a funny conversation, but what if we could really pull it off? Hmmm….
We were laughing that we should start a Kickstarter to buy a controlling portion of GW shares! Haha, that would be hilarious! We could offer stock as the product for sale, with the more you pitch in, the more stock you get! It would only go through if we had enough to buy up the shares.
Then, we could run the company the way we thought it should be run! No more crazy price hikes, let the design team run things free of corporate influence, actually utilize the IP to grow the brand with cartoons, movies, etc.
It often feels like GW exists only to abuse the awesome IP and game that we love in order to lure dollars out of our pocket. While I fully support free enterprise and the right for the creator of something to profit from it, when it compromises the integrity of the product it becomes a problem in my mind.
Oh the things we could do! But then, you you run into all the issues with who gets to make decisions, etc. and in the end you’d probably end up with more of a mess than anything else. If it were possible to have clear leadership though, the possibilities are enticing!
We were joking, of course, but it was fun to joke about. Putting the game in the direct control of the players would certainly help to improve the integrity of the game. We could have the rules we wanted, frequent updates, clarifications, etc. We would be able to vote on models and units we wanted to see, etc.
The company would almost certainly not be as profitable, but would that be so bad? So long as it could innovate, produce new products, support and engage the community and create something we all really had a vested interest in would be pretty awesome if it actually worked.
So, something to think about as a code red fall back! haha, if things get really unbearable, we may have to take matters into our own hands!
As long as, when you purchase the shares, you go “ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL” I’m all for it.
Haha, right?! Otherwise it would be a total disaster, it was just funny to think about it.
Reece not only is it a horrible idea it wouldn’t work. If you did have enough people sell shares and people on our side buy them GW would just dilute our shares and add some to the majority owners stock. Still you would need to get a majority which you couldn’t since the guy in charge has at least half of them already, or a coalition joint investment group does at least.
And yes having fans spend millions of dollars on stock just to make the company become non-profitable and have every other shareholder leave the company leaving our stock in a free fall and have everyone lose those original millions of dollars and have the company die and be the end of 40k is such a good idea
haha you Californians never think things through 😛 nice idea though hahaha
You and your facts! Seesh! Can’t even let us have a little fun playing make believe.
Oh, and Kirby only has 13% of the shares as I understand it (or something like that, I am not certain), but who cares, we were just goofing around =)
I like pie.
You do indeed, I heard you favorite is Docking Pie! Oooooooh! See you at the store, doucer! haha
Speaking if thinking things through…
– diluting shares has been highly illegal since the securities exchange act of 1934. Mostly because It haooened it to Andrew Carnegie and cost him millions.
– “the guy,” you’re like referring to is Tom Kirby who is the single largest shareholder. He does not own anywhere near 51% of the voting shares… As of the last annual report he owned 2 million shares. Which is about 7%. As of their latest filings there is no “coalition,” that owns more than 21%
– When you accomplish a hostile takeover you usually don’t leave other shareholders around to sell off the stock, because you purchased their shares! So there wouldn’t be a mass exodus.
Californians think plenty through things, we just assume everyone can catch up… Our bad. 😉
Duke
Please excuse typos and auto spells, writing on the phone is terrible.
Boom sauce! The Empire Strikes back! Haha!
I don’t know enough about that side of finance to add anything of value to this conversation so I’m just going to egg everyone else on!
Just to further a serious analysis of this along, nothing in principle would prevent this. But it doesn’t look very feasible for a few reasons
It appears that while Tom Kirby has only a direct ownership of 7% he’s in defacto control of the board. Before Wells resigned 3/5 of board members where employees. The two ‘independent’ directors have been around for over a decade. This suggests cronyism.
For a complete list of major holders you can go here.
http://investor.games-workshop.com/shareholder-statistics/
The second issue is that shareholder ownership is very concentrated. What we see is that major holders control 54.8% of the company. This is a pretty discouraging sign for our plan unless some of these guys could be convinced to see things your way. You would need significantly more than 10% ownership to be a commanding player here. The largest kickstarter ever was $10MM, GW is worth about $200MM. Pulling this off would need to at least double the record, likely more.
To round out our assessment that the company is tightly controlled you can just look at the history of voting at the previous 3 shareholder meetings. The number of votes for each resolution is almost identical for each of the 9-11 resolutions every year. Resolutions always pass.
That said if you could sway the powers that be at some of these investment firms you could effect change without spending a penny. In fact I think trying to talk to these guys and understand their motivations is probably the best path to change, though still an improbable one. These firms are probably really happy with things and don’t have a lot of incentive for change. The current management is doing a fine job of harvesting as much money as possible from the market before a change in market dynamics puts them out of business. (that happens to every business eventually)
If you were really curious/interested in this I suggest you buy a few shares and go to the AGM next September. You’d learn a lot and may even have a chance to ask questions. No setting up a kickstarter to go there and try to get some answers that seems like a viable idea and wouldn’t require that much $$$. Though my guess is that a guy like Tom Kirby (meaning a CEO of a public company) is very adept at dodging questions and providing non-answers.
Yeah, I think you are right. We were kidding, but kind of being serious, if you know what I mean.
I honestly feel that we cane about the product and the company more than the brass does in terms of what it is at its core.We love the spirit of it, they look at it as a resource (as you said).
I think about ways to create an awesome game that is for the community. Some kind of open source creation that is owned by the gamers, and put aside the primary motivation of turning a profit which invariably destroys the spirit of the product, IMO.
While we r all dreaming. I going to throw a bone into that dream. U can always do what we call LBO. Dont ask me how can u do it cause u cant but why not use it as part of a dream.
2008 was the most profitable year iirc. The majority of ppl buy a new box monthly at most cause of the recent prices. Haven’t bought anything since chaos release
2008 was the most profitable year iirc. The majority of ppl buy a new box monthly at most cause of the recent prices. Haven’t bought anything since chaos release. When the next blood angels are released I’ll buy a lot but last 2 codecs didn’t do anything for me.
“Oh the things we could do! But then, you you”