Frontier Developments Share Discussion Threads

[cirlbunting1] 12/12/2023 12:43

Haha perhaps!

[74tom] 12/12/2023 12:08

This isn't Swedbank as it's been far more aggressive, could even be shorting

[sbb1x] 12/12/2023 11:40

Who is the seller.....

[the_mandalorian] 12/12/2023 11:10

With all due respect, maybe you should have stuck with plan A ?

As in taking your own advice; getting rid if it doesn't make money?

Cirlbunting1 - 16 Jun 2023 - 07:45:54 - 6759 of 7143 Frontier Developments - Elite gaming..... - FDEV
Added at 5.30. Removing dead wood is exactly whats needed. If its not making money - get rid.

[kemche] 12/12/2023 11:01

Hubris meets nemesis - live!

[cirlbunting1] 12/12/2023 10:57

Just bought my last tranche at 98.

[phowdo] 12/12/2023 10:18

1000 staff, so that 20M is 20k per staff member. Or about 4 months of continuing operations and/or redundancy payouts.
Why this company needed to scale up to 1000 staff is beyond me.

[74tom] 12/12/2023 10:16

They *had* £20m in the bank, however they are operating at a significant loss, if your forecasts show cash running low by end of H1 & the next game not landing until after that then you'll need to take action to avoid going concern problems.

[the_mandalorian] 12/12/2023 10:15

Looking at the balance sheet and future commitments that 20 million isn't going to last long with the overheads this company has.
But agreed a large seller/s has been dumping here for weeks

[wallywoo] 12/12/2023 10:09

They have £20m in the bank. Can't be a placing. Must be a forced seller. Not in here, but certainly looking interesting at this price.

[the_mandalorian] 12/12/2023 10:08

It looks like it's going to the 100p before Xmas target ahead of time.

Maybe our fund manager friend should have worked at Short side hedge fund?

[74tom] 12/12/2023 10:06

Placing inbound? Certainly trading like someone wants to get out at all costs...

[the_mandalorian] 11/12/2023 09:05

Hi, Yank, I am not specifically talking about selling individual games, The point I made, and if you read my post, it was in the context of a 'best-case scenario' rather than a prediction.
What I ventilated was that the only escape for shareholders I could see was someone buying the Company for say circa £50 million and then closing it down period.

I am not a fan of FDEV as you can probably surmise, but, even I can see that Income over the next three to four years based on the games already generating revenue should be more than £100 million in total (not annually)

IMHO.

[yankhanson] 09/12/2023 00:33

Mandalorian, £50-70m for the milkable old games? Please do tell how you got a figure so high. Only one of those games is even in the Steam top 250. JWE2, in the bargain bin, earning Frontier about £7 a copy. The other previously successful games are even older, have been long bargain-binned, and are likely already milked out.

Re. ikn's "most valuable IP/assets: Jurassic and Rollercoaster" one should note that (C) is held by the franchise originators Universal Studios and Chris Sawyer respectively. Similarly the Realms of Ruin game is owned by Games Workshop, not Frontier.

The industry is suffering product oversupply at the moment, so I would be amazed if a sale of Frontier's old games catalog could raise more than £10m all-in. Which, for context, is about half the company's liability for rent on its increasingly redundant huge office building.

[74tom] 08/12/2023 15:43

No chance that Braben sells his baby, there is a reason he's got a >30% shareholding. My prediction remains a keep the lights on placing and then forced downsizing. For remaining II's it's get out at any price by the looks of things.

Liberum's bearish note yesterday with a TP of 150p sums things up nicely, until they can get back to basics and produce a solid game that actually makes money, shares will be under the cosh.

[ikn] 08/12/2023 13:27

One scenario is a possible acquisition by another game developer.
My guess would be a discounted buyout price based on most valuable IP/assets: Jurassic and Rollercoaster

[fuji99] 08/12/2023 13:05

Anybody guessing the future of this company ?

[siddiqur2] 08/12/2023 12:45

They're showing buys as sells

[the_mandalorian] 06/12/2023 09:05

Agreed, there are no fundamental reasons on the information available that would make any normal-minded person like to join the sinking ship.

The only escape for shareholders that could play out, and I would not personally take the risk, is that some other sector player buys it @ £50-70 million and then like my previous post suggests, "integrates it" (closes it down) and milks the revenue stream until it dies.

By the time any takeover occurs the share price could be 50p with holders fighting themselves to accept £1.


A large seller is in the market, dumping circa 300k this am alone


aimho

[yankhanson] 05/12/2023 23:36

"How does a company share price go from £34 down to £1.30? Can anyone explain"

The key to understanding is the £34, not the £1.30. At £34, FDEV was a balloon inflated by hype, pumped by newspaper tipsters, analysts etc..... whilst quilted from red flags that unravelled when the game market renormalised post-COVID, and oops, game buyers once again would not buy sub-standard product.

The immediate cause of FDEV's fall is just one thing. The major investors lost confidence in management. Said management then proved them right with flop after flop, warning after warning, and most damning of all, total failure to spot each obviously foreseeable disaster ahead. The real damage done by the latest game Realms of Ruin is not the flop, but the fact management actually really genuinely sincerely believed it was going to be a massive hit, worth their biggest development spend ever, right up to the moment of the launch day memo saying the number of people buying the game was ... virtually zero. Further, after each disaster they compounded the error by showing total lack of contrition. If they'd admitted they'd done a bad job, then investors might take seriously their promises to do better. But no, they always push the blame onto external factors such as competition, spending power, which is fatal, because that is the one type of thing on which management can never do better.

This is why no amount of promised remedial action by this management is going to arrest the share price fall, let alone recover the loss. They have proven to the market that nothing they say should be trusted. This will be solved only by the departure of David Braben and friends, to make room for untainted replacements who can start rebuilding trust.

How ironic it is then that the only recent board departure was its most valuable member, Chairman David Wilton, a long-time industry star, fresh from the biggest AIM game company sale ever... but sticking with Frontier only for one year. And how telling it is that the best replacement Frontier could find was a nice lady who has zero management experience of the games industry.

I predict share price will drop to double figures by end January, soon after which management will be forced to face the cash crisis and will do a dilutive cash raise, or delist and take private, or both.

[sbb1x] 05/12/2023 17:34

Went down very easy today

[the_mandalorian] 05/12/2023 15:42

mortal1ty- "Right now, with the company on a £58m market-cap, and £20m cash in the bank, I struggle to see how it can fall too much more"

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What kind of "fund manager" is this guy then? the sort thats research is looking at a price that fell from £30 and thinks this must be cheap. Well, it isn't cheap at all.


1. maybe forget about the cash. They do not intend to hand the 20 million to shareholders they will have to spend it, so I don't understand why you would value it as a merit to the share price going forward.

2. The older games like Jurassic World Evolution 2 bringing in the money do not have a shelf life that lasts in perpetuity and then what are they left with?
Massive overheads and loss-making new games.
Horrid lifestyle business for the bod.

Call me old-fashioned in valuation but I see a loss-making company with high overheads with nothing compelling going forward and living off old smoke.

it's a clear sell, it should be sub 100p before Christmas.
Save sacking everybody apart from the auditors and just soaking up the turnover from existing games and then paying out the 100 -150 million in dividends over the next few years, I can not think of one reason why anyone would buy this.

[fuji99] 05/12/2023 15:35

Apart from GAW, all gaming stocks down. For FDEV, IMO the reason for this non-stop decay is the fact they kept downgrading their projections in series. So the market won't believe any promise from them anymore until they start delivering real numbers. Adding to it the chairman departure; this does not inspire any confidence in investing in this company. So PI's are selling what they can sell and buyers will come back only when they witness some well established business discipline and seriousness. When investors start not taking a company seriously, then confidence takes times to return. IMO this is what's happening.