Frontier Developments Share Discussion Threads

[m4ybe] 15/8/2017 08:02

Those Planet Coaster sales are still full price £29.99 on Steam, for only three quarters of a year, and now they sell buyable extras too. Hopefully much of it is profit with a lot of costs covered by Elite. I think the new game will be all profit apart from licence fees. I think they can get to last year's entire market cap in profit soon.

[panic investor] 15/8/2017 07:54

Nice timing BB

[deltrotter] 15/8/2017 07:48

Liberum initiates coverage with an 850p target.

Good luck guys - I don't hold - but I cut my mustard on Elite on the BBC B. Think I got to Deadly or Dangerous (which ever was "less")....

[bamboo2] 14/8/2017 09:43

Anticipating a turn [up] in the chart over next two days, so bought back some of the shares sold a while ago. gla

[makw61] 04/8/2017 14:19

Another brief update in Investors' Chronicle today on the back of the Tencent announcement. Nothing particularly new in there, but they speculate that FDEV might be a potential takeover target for Tencent and ends with: "we think the growth story has further to go", and they maintain their buy recommendation.

[m4ybe] 04/8/2017 07:59

In the livestream last night Frontier Ed made a point of saying development of the new franchise is going 'very well'.

[bamboo2] 02/8/2017 10:03

Realised an error in my recent calculations for tp, due to the fact that the flagpole continued on beyond the newsday on 28/7/17 to top out on 31/7/17 at 670. [I had done the calcs over the weekend]

Therefore up breakout on the current flag tp rises from 694 to 724.5

This consolidation period could be over very soon. imo

[m4ybe] 02/8/2017 08:06

I visited Activision in the late 90s when they would hire a couple of freelance people to develop a game. Hopefully Frontier will scale up carefully as they have done. They feel more like the winners that I have seen than the losers, they don't seem to be making mistakes. The upside for a European giant has become about £5bn looking at Ubisoft, and tens of billions in the US.

[m4ybe] 02/8/2017 07:53

I think Tencent has minority stakes for a good reason. The games business is unusually creative, and the efforts of the participants can make a big difference to success, rather than mainly a marketing issue. I would think having the major participants retain a lot of skin in the game is optimal for success. It worked well for the Unreal Engine by Epic Games, which has gone onto become the dominant game engine for larger games I think, and is now about three times as popular, according to Google Trends, as when they bought the stake. Tencent has been happy for the founders to retain 51% in that case, and probably put some business their way.

[adamb1978] 01/8/2017 21:04

Agree with p1nkfish's comment a few days ago - its perfectly believable that, given the business model, this thing could be a £1bn company in the future. Whether that's 1 year,2 years or 5 years I have no idea however having trimmed BOO and G4M on the way up from about 30p and 200p respectively, I have no intention of doing so with this one.

Earnings growth, I think, will be somewhat lumpy for the next couple years until the portfolio of titles and platforms is larger however might provide opportunities.

You could also imagine Tencent forcing some consolidation amongst the various companies in which it holds stakes at some point in the future as well

[makw61] 01/8/2017 18:42

Yeah i agree doesn't change anything (i probably should have said mathematical control rather than effective as 30% plus would be enough for effective, as m4ybe has pointed out). I was really trying to understand why Tencent took a 9% stake and not a different amount, but I'm probably overanalysing tbh.

To my mind David B is Frontier, so it's all pretty irrelevant really. I just know that having run (and sold) my own business, one tends to be quite careful about ownership percentages.

Didn't understand the reddit thread tbh as even if Tencent had signed their voting rights over, that doesn't change ownership.

The important thing is that it's a very positive development for the company and the more i think about it the more opportunities spring to mind in terms of far eastern distribution, additional languages, mobile, customer support, hosting, IP sharing/licensing etc etc.

GLA

[m4ybe] 01/8/2017 17:43

It's inevitable through granted share options over time that his ownership will eventually slip beneath 50%, so I don't think he's losing anything here. This inevitability was set in place in the 2013 IPO. Even a third share ownership would be very hard to get a vote against.

[ck1111] 01/8/2017 17:30

hxxps://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/6q2ssj/tencent_buys_9_of_frontier_developments_worth_177/dkvp31z/?context=10000

Ed Lewis, Frontier Community Manager, responds to thread about DB's share holding dropping below 50% / no longer having controlling stake in company.

"This is incorrect. David still owns the majority of the company. The direction and operation of the business remains EXACTLY the same. I'm not a finance/shares expert by any means, but I just wanted to step in and say that I know the above for certain, because I asked."

So Tencent dont have voting rights? But he is very clear in his message.

[makw61] 01/8/2017 10:52

Thanks for that bit of info, Hastings. It sounds like the Tencent deal happened pretty quickly. My guess is that Tencent wanted the whole thing but the amount of shares issued is probably the max that could be issued whilst leaving David B in effective control. It looks like David's shares plus management's plus e.g. Jonathan Milner's shares is very close to 50% of the issued share capital. With options to be exercised then that will increase over time. I'm pleased that David is looking after the long-term interests of shareholders; that's not as common as it should be on AIM!

[bamboo2] 31/7/2017 10:08

hastings, thanks for the prompt reply. Yes, there could be all sorts of good reasons!

[hastings] 31/7/2017 09:52

Ah very interesting that one. It was actually cancelled at very short notice!Given last week's news don't take it as a negative. My understanding is that it is still going take place later in the year and at a more suitable time for Frontier!!!

[bamboo2] 31/7/2017 09:21

hastings, any feedback from your tour of the HQ?

bruce, hope so.

[bruceylegs] 31/7/2017 09:00

Maybe heading that way today Bamboo.

[bamboo2] 31/7/2017 08:29

EOD close above 638 raises tp to 694

[m4ybe] 28/7/2017 16:08

I noticed in Thailand there were a huge number of YouTube videos demonstrating PlanetCoaster in Thai voice overs, with very big view counts. The game may be a little pricey for Asia but they seem to have taken to it, in video form at least, like Minecraft. So I think massive potential in China if they can get the price right there, or perhaps they can afford it these days anyway.

[m4ybe] 28/7/2017 16:04

Nice bounce off 590 so far today, that's the +100% level year to date.

[hpcg] 28/7/2017 15:56

One observation I do have is that thus far on this thread it is predominantly made up of cautious, well respected, even mannered long term posters. Just wait until the dribbling loons join in. There'll be minute by minute price updates, evil market makers and rocket ships.

[cfro] 28/7/2017 15:23

It hardly looks like its got going on your second chart LM. :-)