Games Workshop released its annual report for the 2024-25 financial year on Tuesday, revealing that the firm had – once again – delivered its most successful year ever selling Warhammer. The report is familiar reading for anyone who has followed GW over recent years – licensing revenues from Space Marine 2 were exceptionally high, sales growth across all channels is largely on track with the firm’s predictions, and IT infrastructure remains the main identified issue that could put the brakes on growth. What is unusual is CEO Kevin Rountree’s suggestion that “the main challenge from my perspective was for the senior management team overcoming some fear”.
What follows is the corporate equivalent of vaguebooking or subtweeting – an allusion to unspecified circumstances that only the people involved could possibly understand. “I won’t go into the details”, Rountree says, “just to say that our culture is built on having the appropriate amount of courage when it comes to planning for growth”.
Demand for Warhammer 40k and other GW products has risen continually since 2016, leaping up both during the Coronavirus lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, and again with the release of the extremely popular Warhammer 40k 10th edition in 2023. GW has sometimes struggled to produce and deliver enough product for certain popular releases, often leaving fans unable to get their hands on stock. GW has also been bullish about expanding into new markets, opening its first Korean store this year and expanding in Japan.
To sell more products, a firm has to invest money on buildings, machines, staff, software, and so on. While demand for Warhammer 40k factions and Age of Sigmar armies has increased continually for a long time, managers have to consider the possibility that demand is about to plateau or even fall off, turning expensive investments into costly white elephants.
In the 2024-25 Annual Report, Rountree states “we learnt a lesson – to stay focused on delivering the best plan and take confidence from our [moving annual total] trends”, emphasising that senior management should “focus on relentlessly delivering our proven strategies, rather than being distracted by any particular week or month’s performance”.
Putting what Rountree says together, it seems that some short-term results gave someone (or several people, or the entire management team) the wobbles, which delayed, distracted from, or perhaps just harshed the vibes on some costly long-term investment strategies.
The firm is pursuing a lot of lines of growth at once. With Space Marine 2 raking in $70.2 (£52.5) million in licensing revenue this year, GW is looking for more opportunities to license its products to other businesses, and has been hiring staff to handle these relationships for several years. For the core business of making miniatures, the firm invested $9.4 (£7.0) million on moulding tools, and $1.3 (£1.0) million on tooling, milling, and injection moulding machines in 2024/25, and has committed $10.7 (£8.0) million to open a fourth factory near its HQ in Nottingham, UK.
For fulfilment, the USA warehouse in Memphis gained 10 robots and 41 staff, while in Australia the firm moved into a new, larger warehouse to reduce space pressure. Connected to that, the IT team is delivering a multi-year project to replace legacy IT infrastructure, set to complete in 2028-29. And for international sales, the new Operational Sales Director apparently has a plan to open around 35 new stores in North America, Continental Europe, and Asia, in 2025-26.
It’s also possible that the sudden shock of tariffs on goods imported to the USA caused senior leaders to blink. Rountree estimates that if the firm does nothing, “new tariffs could impact profit before tax by circa $16 (£12) million in 2025-26”.
GW declared post-tax profits of $262.1 (£196.1) million in the financial year 2024-25, beating last year’s (already record breaking) figure by $60 (£45) million. Perhaps the spooked senior managers were reading the Horus Heresy books: financially speaking, this is a golden age for Games Workshop, and a fall would be poetic. But that doesn’t mean that it’s likely.
If you have thoughts about how GW is responding to the sudden popularity of Warhammer 40k, come and join us in the official Wargamer Discord community. Bonus internet points for anyone willing to read the full annual report before posting.