General / Off-Topic Frontier Share Price Drop

[Harbinger]

That thing with " no new games for 2024 " is what killing them atm it seems.

That only refers to Foundry (third party developed) games which have been very hit & miss (mainly miss). FY24 (1st June 2023 - 31st May 2024) will still see the release of a Warhammer: Age of Sigmar RTS game and F1 Manager 2023 although 'd be concerned for the performance of the latter if they don't knock it out of the park on their second outing.

 

[Star Wanderer]

Yeah, but since Foundry is seemingly doing so badly it probably makes sense for them to dump it rather than double down in the long run. Note it was about Foundry, i don't think they said they would be doing no new games at all in 2024.

That combined with poor sales of F1 Manager 2022, with the expectations that sets for F1 Manager 2023 was not going to increase investor confidence.

The thing i've noted with Foundry games is that they tend not to be bad ideas per se, but they just all seem to be missing something that will make them sell well.

I see.
I only have Stranded Alien Dawn(SAD) and 40k Chaos Gate from their Foundry collection.
While SAD still in Early Access but i would say it's a really good game, if they have some DLC plans they will sell good i am sure.
40k Chaos Gate on the othe hand first DLC already have Mostly Negative reviews - they really got greedy there and upset a lot of players.
Not sure how much they get as a Publisher, but at least SAD looks very promising.

 

[Fnord Velkor]

Have a look at this week's share chat on here:

https://www.lse.co.uk/ShareChat.asp?ShareTicker=FDEV&share=Frontier-Dev

 

[Rebel Yell]

Ouch... time to cut costs (getting rid of Legacy?)!

 

[Star Wanderer]

That only refers to Foundry (third party developed) games which have been very hit & miss (mainly miss). FY24 (1st June 2023 - 31st May 2024) will still see the release of a Warhammer: Age of Sigmar RTS game and F1 Manager 2023 although 'd be concerned for the performance of the latter if they don't knock it out of the park on their second outing.

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - since it's RTS, they will probably be compared to Warhammer series( different but similar settings), and that series has a huge Mod community, so people would probably expect Modding in Warhammer: AoS too, else it's in for a rough ride.
Sort of like F1 Manager lost to F1@22, might see the same trend here in Warhammer: AoS vs Warhammer 3.

 

[Harbinger]

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - since it's RTS, they will probably be compared to Warhammer series( different but similar settings), and that series has a huge Mod community, so people would probably expect Modding in Warhammer: AoS too, else it's in for a rough ride.
Sort of like F1 Manager lost to F1@22, might see the same trend here in Warhammer: AoS vs Warhammer 3.

Although there are no details as yet I would imagine they're going for a more C&C type RTS rather than a Total War: Warhammer type game. It's more in fitting with Frontier's strategy to target a niche that's no longer getting much love beyond the occasional remaster.

 

[Chaparral]

Have a look at this week's share chat on here:

https://www.lse.co.uk/ShareChat.asp?ShareTicker=FDEV&share=Frontier-Dev

Read that thread. Seems like the posters are sympathetic to the investors and did not have kind things to say about the management of the company as a publicly traded entity. Hope they keep the lights on with ED - hope they do't sell out to the likes of 10¢.

 

[Star Wanderer]

Read that thread. Seems like the posters are sympathetic to the investors and did not have kind things to say about the management of the company as a publicly traded entity. Hope they keep the lights on with ED - hope they do't sell out to the likes of 10¢.

Well they lost everything they have gained in the last 5 years. That means, everything from their publishing career, to their own games starting from JWE, Planet Zoo, JWE 2, F1 Manager.
They are probably looking at selling the company and retiring, while they still have some fame. Things have been going down hill for the last 2 years, so badly, they lost 85%( from 3300 to 517) since their peak 2 years ago.
I seriously had no idea things were going this bad, i mean Odyssey was a wake up call, but 85% in 2 years. How do you recover from that?

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Well they lost everything they have gained in the last 5 years. That means, everything from their publishing career, to their own games starting from JWE, Planet Zoo, JWE 2, F1 Manager.
They are probably looking at selling the company and retiring, while they still have some fame. Things have been going down hill for the last 2 years, so badly, they lost 85%( from 3300 to 517) since their peak 2 years ago.
I seriously had no idea things were going this bad, i mean Odyssey was a wake up call, but 85% in 2 years. How do you recover from that?

You recover by taking a close look at what you are producing and how you are doing it, then think long and hard how to make it better.

That can though require making some really difficulty (and sometimes risky) choices.

 

[metatheurgist]

You recover by taking a close look at what you are producing and how you are doing it, then think long and hard how to make it better.

That can though require making some really difficulty (and sometimes risky) choices.

Like dropping console....

 

[Harbinger]

Well they lost everything they have gained in the last 5 years. That means, everything from their publishing career, to their own games starting from JWE, Planet Zoo, JWE 2, F1 Manager.
They are probably looking at selling the company and retiring, while they still have some fame. Things have been going down hill for the last 2 years, so badly, they lost 85%( from 3300 to 517) since their peak 2 years ago.
I seriously had no idea things were going this bad, i mean Odyssey was a wake up call, but 85% in 2 years. How do you recover from that?

They haven't really lost anything, Frontier don't earn or lose any money based upon the price of shares they already sold to the public long ago. They also don't pay any dividends.They make their money by developing and selling games and have a £42.6m war chest right now. An increase of £3.9m on the previous 6 months. This despite spending £8m acquiring the studio who developed Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters a couple of months back.

The only people losing money are shareholders who may be holding shares that they paid significantly more for earlier and only then if they turn it from an on paper loss to an actual loss by locking it in.

Frontier are fine financially, they have a strong balance sheet and all of their games are still producing revenue, just not as quickly as previous years which they put down to concerns about inflation and fuel prices meaning people aren't spending as much on non-essential items like games. I suspect we'll see many other studios stating their sales are lower than expected in the coming months too.

 

[Cosmo]

Frontier should focus on delivering quality games. There's been too many rushed and buggy releases (F1 Manager, Odyssey).

The thing i've noted with Foundry games is that they tend not to be bad ideas per se, but they just all seem to be missing something that will make them sell well.

Games like Standed Alien Dawn needed more marketing such as getting streamers to play it.

 

[Star Wanderer]

They haven't really lost anything, Frontier don't earn or lose any money based upon the price of shares they already sold to the public long ago. They also don't pay any dividends.They make their money by developing and selling games and have a £42.6m war chest right now. An increase of £3.9m on the previous 6 months. This despite spending £8m acquiring the studio who developed Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters a couple of months back.

The only people losing money are shareholders who may be holding shares that they paid significantly more for earlier and only then if they turn it from an on paper loss to an actual loss by locking it in.

Frontier are fine financially, they have a strong balance sheet and all of their games are still producing revenue, just not as quickly as previous years which they put down to concerns about inflation and fuel prices meaning people aren't spending as much on non-essential items like games. I suspect we'll see many other studios stating their sales are lower than expected in the coming months too.

I am not an expert, but one think of it as a safety net, no? If the War chest starts drying, you can always sell some shares to replanish and re invest. But once share drops in price, that safety net is gone, right?
But how do you increase the price of shares? You release and publish new games, right? And now they wiped 5 years of their progress, their entire " Boom " state, where they were riding the waves with new game release each year.

On the bright side, since it all began with Odyssey failure in early 2021, only a new Elite Dangerous DLC can reverse this progress

 

[Star Wanderer]

Frontier should focus on delivering quality games. There's been too many rushed and buggy releases (F1 Manager, Odyssey).


Games like Standed Alien Dawn needed more marketing such as getting streamers to play it.

Something happend to SAD devs, they were doing streams each week, but than mid December went silent, and canceled 2 last stream that month. Which makes me worry, since they were shotting streams from Frontier studio.
No streams so far this month either.

 

[starman]

Something happend to SAD devs, they were doing streams each week, but than mid December went silent, and canceled 2 last stream that month. Which makes me worry, since they were shotting streams from Frontier studio.
No streams so far this month either.

Must be feeling SAD

 

[Harbinger]

I am not an expert, but one think of it as a safety net, no? If the War chest starts drying, you can always sell some shares to replanish and re invest. But once share drops in price, that safety net is gone, right?
But how do you increase the price of shares? You release and publish new games, right? And now they wiped 5 years of their progress, their entire " Boom " state, where they were riding the waves with new game release each year.

On the bright side, since it all began with Odyssey failure in early 2021, only a new Elite Dangerous DLC can reverse this progress

The only shares the company itself owns are those held by the Employee Benefit Trust in order to be able to meet obligations to grant options and run employee sharesaver schemes. At the last notification this was a little under half a million shares or 1.2% of those in issue. The company spent around £5m getting to that figure around 9 months ago (in the previous fiscal year) when the price was £13 per share.

The rest of the shares are personal holdings so in the event of any being sold the company doesn't get any of that money, the selling party does.

Share price is not relevant to the day to day operations of a company, a much reduced pricepoint could certainly make the company a target for acquisition but if such a thing is uninvited the party would need to gain to a 30% holding in the company to initiate a mandatory takeover bid and that's pretty tough to do when less than 40% of the shares are on the open market.

 

[starman]

If someone had shorted the stock for profits..

 

[starman]

The only shares the company itself owns are those held by the Employee Benefit Trust in order to be able to meet obligations to grant options and run employee sharesaver schemes. At the last notification this was a little under half a million shares or 1.2% of those in issue. The company spent around £5m getting to that figure around 9 months ago (in the previous fiscal year) when the price was £13 per share.

The rest of the shares are personal holdings so in the event of any being sold the company doesn't get any of that money, the selling party does.

Share price is not relevant to the day to day operations of a company, a much reduced pricepoint could certainly make the company a target for acquisition but such a thing is uninvited the party would need to gain to a 30% holding in the company to initiate a mandatory takeover bid and that's pretty tough to do when less than 40% of the shares are on the open market.

Elon musk might be interested.

 

[Alien]

Maybe Saudi Arabia would take this as an opportunity to buy Frontier. They have been buying up other companies (well, ok ... just one announced today) ....

Though I honestly think Frontier are fine, they are a 20 year+ company and their 2nd game release was a nightmare they managed to survive ok.

 

[amigacooke]

Perhaps Apple might be looking for a cheap acquisition launch title for their rumoured AR/VR device?