Frontier Developments Share Discussion Threads

[mauricemonkey] 23/2/2018 17:27

I thought MIFID II meant all trades had to be disclosed?

[bamboo2] 23/2/2018 17:19

Hi nimbo, thanks for the above. I agree that we are currently not seeing all the volume.

I'm not a great one for blaming the mm's and other conspiracies etc, but from my recent experience with 'dummy' and real trades, can only conclude that shares are being accumulated somewhere along the line.

[nimbo1] 23/2/2018 13:21

Bamboo in response to your post from yesterday i've been watching FDEV on l2 last few days and i think many of the larger trades aren't being listed. Market has gone very thin - for example there are currently c.400 shares available up to 12.70! currently quite a few buys listed at 1240. Volume v low and market has gone very thin.

[makw61] 23/2/2018 07:59

The latest results presentation is available on Frontier's website, which is worth a read.

[shanklin] 23/2/2018 07:21

Starts:

"Although Jurassic World 2 has yet to reach cinemas, the folks at Universal Pictures are already pushing forward with a sequel.

The studio has now confirmed a third Jurassic World movie, along with a release date and the team of writers who will once again bring dinosaurs to cinemas. "

[mark4231] 22/2/2018 15:06

Where are all the shares being sold going to?

[bamboo2] 22/2/2018 14:54

I want to complain!

I can get an autoquote to sell 1000, but can't buy any more without placing an order.

I have added a few dribs and drabs this afternoon, but it is a bit frustrating.

[nimbo1] 22/2/2018 11:34

Looked back at my notes - i don't know about officially or unofficially but Elite is not available in china through official channels - cant sell it at the moment because the government won't support content such as smuggling and overthrowing governments etc. Perhaps this could change in the future if they loosen up but nothing is certain in this regard. PC is available in china.

[mark4231] 21/2/2018 12:26

Will be interesting to see whether the first release of Beyond gives a bump up in sales. I'll be watching the Steam top sellers list with interest.

I thought Elite: Dangerous and Planet Coaster are already available in China via Steam? Just not localised and without local servers.

[nimbo1] 21/2/2018 12:04

hxxps://www.polygon.com/2018/2/20/17033334/elite-dangerous-beyond-release-date-price-pc-playstation-xbox

New Elite dangerous chapter released 27th feb - free content release.

In time it would be great for FDEV to get permission to sell elite dangerous in China. Though of course there are hurdles to do with content etc.

[nimbo1] 20/2/2018 09:49

for now selling volume has dried up - cant buy more than 1000 but can sell 10x that amount. bodes well. I might have to buy level 2. Any of you use it?

[mark4231] 17/2/2018 16:57

Anything is possible as the unlikeliest of games has sold many many millions and game sales can go through the roof if it takes off with the wider community. In reverse it can all go horribly wrong, a terrible or bug ridden game. However with PC selling 1.4m I think, and with JWE being multi-platform and tied to a major film franchise I would say 2m to 3m is the probable area with other numbers quite possible but in the struck lucky region.

Although JWE is exciting of course in the next few months, it's the Chinese angle and further franchises building up and solidifying the company in the long term that really appeal.

All IMHO.

[makw61] 17/2/2018 10:27

For fdev i like to look at a number of sales scenarios, assign probabilities, then calculate expected value. On my assumptions those probabilities cluster around 5m, but e.g. 1m and 10m have small, but non-zero, probabilities in the model. I will adjust the probabilities as we get more info, but there appears to be considerable upside vs market expectations imo.

Alongside the chinese market which has not really been a big driver of sales previously, the key is being multi-platform at launch. If you look at PUBG, the breakout hit of 2017, that was released on PC only in mar 2017, and was classified early access at that, with xbox release dec 2017 (still not on PS4). The wiki page lists it as multi-platform, which is true but a bit misleading. Steamspy has it over 30m units so i think the number on wiki is probably light. The 50th best-selling game was PS2 only. i'm cherry-picking here, but hey if nintendogs (DS only) can sell 24m, this thing has got dinosaurs that you can design and hatch :p

I like the fact that fdev are not competing in e.g. the FPS market so i don't see a direct read-across from Battlefront, which was never reckoned to be a great game and there was a lot of push-back over in-game purchases needed for loot crates and to release characters. I totally agree that 10m would be a massive stretch here, but i think the market is wrong to give such scenarios a zero possibility with the way the market is developing. The reality is that anything over 1.5m will move the price higher so i feel comfortable with that.

I've been invested here since £1.75 so i may have developed some rose-tinted spectacles, so always good to hear some dissenting views to challenge my assumptions.

ATB

[nimbo1] 17/2/2018 07:46

Star wars battle front 1 has sold 15 million units since 2015 from wikipedia and according to reviews wasn't great. Star wars the force awakens took $2.066 billion in the box office (google). The last jurassic world film took $1.627 billion from the box office. (google). So applying similar interest levels from film to game looks good to me - if indeed the next film does well and assuming there is some sort of relationship. No proof of course either way until its released but the opportunity translates to me as limited downside and a lot of upside in equity value terms imo. Using fincap note and their upside scenery of 2.5 mil sales i can see a 2bil market cap here and posted assumptions above - if anyone does some different valuation work id be interested to hear it. I always like my optimism tested!

[mauricemonkey] 16/2/2018 23:19

If you want to start bandying figures like 10M units year one, or even 5M units - you need to compare it to games like Star Wars Battlefront 2.
I doubt JWE will capture that much excitement. 1.5M units seems reasonable given it's an unproven franchise, with hopes to the upside. Anything over 3M will be exceptional imv.
Cracking China is critical, it's the world's biggest gaming market.
The 50th best video game in terms of sales, of all time, only sold 15M in its life time (unless I'm reading this article wrong - it is late on a Friday night :)). 10M per year, or even 10M ever seems hard:

[funkmasterp12] 16/2/2018 11:23

Rather hockey stick-esque today!

[mark4231] 16/2/2018 09:07

Thanks for explaining the probable performance difference between PC and JWE makw61. That would make sense.

[makw61] 15/2/2018 18:18

Me too, nimbo. I keep nibbling away at these even though they are by far my largest holding already. I just know that once they start to move they will move very quickly.

[nimbo1] 15/2/2018 17:42

Makw I think we'll achieve those sale figures as well. Especially with china targeted the right way with tencent. On that basis I've been buying more as I think it is cheap but am now seriously top heavy.

[makw61] 15/2/2018 17:38

You'll notice in the video btw that the building is simply placed, it isn't built from the ground up. JWE will be more about gameplay rather than building which i think gives it broader appeal, although i accept that building games e.g. minecraft, cities skylines etc have very strong followings.

[makw61] 15/2/2018 17:33

I expect the buildings in JWE will not be configurable in the way that they are in PC. A single building in PC may have hundreds of component parts which can be put together in essentially an infinite number of ways which makes it computationally expensive. In JWE a building will be a building; there may be variations of that building type but they will not be customisable.

The forecasts for JWE make no sense to me. PC runs only on high end pc's and yet sold over 1m units first 12 months. The addressable market for JWE across pc, PS4, xbox is probably an order of magnitude greater, plus it's got dinosaurs! Suspect the analysts are just playing it safe. I expect 5m units first year, with 10m as a high-end scenario.

[nimbo1] 15/2/2018 16:51

Good point. I should have asked that qu the other week. Ref your 3 platform comment - its why the core 1.5 mil sales figure is so pessimistic in my opinion - it would mean only matching the performance of planet coaster for the PC and selling nothing on the x box or playstation...

[mark4231] 15/2/2018 16:38

One thing to note about Jurassic World Evolution is that it is to be launched for PC, Xbox and Playstation, just like Elite: Dangerous, whereas Planet Coaster is only for PC.

As a side note, I read here that the reason Planet Coaster isn't available on the consoles is due to performance reasons so I'm a little surprised that Jurassic World Evolution will be on the consoles as I would have thought it would be similar. I'm intrigued, presumably there is something fundamentally different about Jurassic World Evolution that means it can run OK on the consoles.

[nimbo1] 15/2/2018 16:03

I've been looking at the fincap note and their sensitivity for JWE sales.

For full year revenue 2019 they assume operating profit of £14.5 million.

to help generate that figure JWE core scenario is for 1.5 million copies sold at an average net selling price of £22.5.

- the upside to this is clearly more units sold and a greater average selling price
- another unknown quantity is the license % they have to pay to universal which is unknown.

In the upside scenario there are 2.5 mil sales at a price of £32.5 = revenue of £81.3.


Because FDEV are operationally geared IF figures are near top end it will ensure large profits and make the current price look very cheap.

this isnt in the note but ff you assume those sales end 2019 they would be expecting total sales of 105.5mil vs 58mil currently in the analysis. Assuming costs remain the same PBT could be in the region of £50 mil plus against the current core prediction of 14.5 million.

If the PE were to drop to say 40 (there will be the next franchises coming along after all so it should remain high) that could lead to a market cap of £2 billion.

Clearly until we see what sales are like etc this is blue sky thinking but underlines the potential over the next 18 months.

[makw61] 10/2/2018 15:00

Couldn't resist buying a few more myself on fri. Should see a steady stream of news now to move the share price.

Brief mention of FDEV in today's FT, focused on the Tencent stake and with Braben quoted on the Chinese opportunity. I think we all agree that is a big one.

Will probably pick up a few more of these on monday if Mr Market continues in manic depressive mood.