07:57

1H 2020 (6 months ending 1st Dec 2019) results were excellent! What a privilege to be a partner in this spectacular business! Especially the kind of hardworking partner where all I have to do is just sit and watch.

The most exciting part of the earnings release was the doubling of the licensing income from GBP 5.5m to GBP 10.7m due to the launch of a new video game. A big part of my investment thesis on GW relies on the increased monetisation of its Warhammer IP beyond just miniatures. While this is a step in the right direction, I fully expect the licensing income to be lumpy and would take years to materialise fully.

In the meantime, the core miniature business is firing on all cylinders….

The revenue grew 18.5% to GBP 148.4m which is above my long term expectation of 10-15%. New games and miniatures release schedule will impact the growth in a specific period. My long term expectation remains unchanged in this regard.

A more detailed study of the revenue growth reveals some encouraging signs. GW breaks down revenue into three channels – Trade, Retail and Online.

Trade channel is 52.6% of the total revenue and growing the fastest at 27.2%. Trade is mostly made up of local mom and pop hobby stores which stocks a variety of trading card and board games such as Magic the Gathering & Catan. These hobby stores are usually the centre of local hobby community which is very similar to GW’s own retail stores. There are 4900 distributors at the end of 1H 2020. The distributor count grew 11.4% and the annual revenue per distributor grew 14.2% to GBP 31.9k. The annual revenue per store for GW’s own retail store is GBP 173k. So there is a 5x gap. Over time, distributors should increase retail sales productivity to close this gap.

Retail channel is 31% of the total revenue and growing at a slower rate of 7.5%. Retail consists of Warhammers stores owned by Games Workshop. The store counted increased by 2.5% while the revenue per store increased by 5% on a YoY basis. Finally, the online channel grew 15.6% and makes up for 16.5% of the total revenue base.

Opening retail stores will help to build brand awareness and seed the initial Warhammer community in a new locality. However, the independent hobby stores is likely to remain the most important driver for revenue growth for the next few years. Because it is uneconomical for GW to open stores everywhere. Online will remain a complementary channel to help fans acquire miniatures that are not stocked in the local hobby store.

Due to the completion of the new factory and optimisation of operational controls, the gross margin has expanded by 2.5% to 69.5%. Different revenue mix of newer vs older miniatures in any one period lead to fluctuating gross margin. Gross margin of an older miniature is higher as the fixed cost of building a plastic mould is amortised over a larger volume. I would expect the gross margin to fluctuate between 67-70%. The core operating profit was GBP 48.5m which was up 37.8% due to the beautiful effect of operating leverage. Core operating profit margin stood at 32.7%.

Investment consideration – at ~GBP 67 per share, GW is valued at roughly 25-28x 2020E earnings. While it is not cheap on a headline basis, I am holding onto my positions due to 1) healthy top-line growth + operating leverage and 2) a very positive prospect on IP monetisation.