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Nothing too surprising in there TBH. The £4.5M loss after Year 3 doesn't demonstrate any real path-to-profit, and with the ad market and esports/gaming market in total shambles, Year 4 doesn't look promising. Remember, the Bitstamp sponsorship was Guild's biggest partner, and they've mutually terminated the deal effective January 2024 (This was great for FY2023's books, but horrible for FY2024 with no replacement partner in sight). Some additional concerns:
--Esports (Guild's core product): Their teams are generally irrelevant now across the board, and the decrease in Prize Money revenue substantiates this.
--Audience: They seem to have acquired a Fortnite TikTok channel, which overwhelmingly contributed to the fluff growth metrics in the Annual Report. I don't ever recall seeing an RNS or purchase price reported, and again, this is not organic growth by any means.
--Academy: There's still little to no reporting on revenue/audience, which speaks for itself.
@Bowlers: Guild is now going on its 3rd (4th?) CFO since IPOing, the stock price is down 15-20% since this announcement, and it's happened mere days before the company's annual report. How many canaries are going to keep dying in this coal mine?
Koti69/jchaplin -
Based on Guild's Aug 2021 RNS ("One Million Owned Audience"), they defined "owned" as follows:
"...an aggregate 'owned-audience' of more than one million across all social channels ... The owned audience figure covers the total number of Guild's fans who actively subscribe to or consume content produced directly by the Company. As of August 6th, 2021, the owned audience amounted to 1,013,305 across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, Twitch, LinkedIn and CRM. This compares with 160,000 followers as at 31 March 2021, representing an increase of approximately 533% over the past five months, making Guild one of the fastest growing esports organisations in the world. At the time of the Company's IPO on 2nd October 2020, the audience was 47,320."
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/GILD/one-million-owned-audience-milestone-rpy06oap777o4vk.html
In the same RNS, they also acknowledge their "network audience" as follows:
"The Company has also seen strong growth in its overall "network audience" which currently totals 16,032,546 million, up from approximately 8 million followers as at 31 March 2021. The network audience covers the Guild followers reached through the combined platforms of Guild's pro players and content creators. These figures exclude followers reached through David Beckham, the Company's brand ambassador and shareholder, whose social media following is in excess of 125 million."
As you can see, the Owned Audience excludes both David Beckham and the audience of their Players/Creators.
So again, let's do the math with their publicly available "Owned" channels as of 7 Dec 2023:
Youtube = 32.9K
Instagram = 58.3K
Twitter/X = 121.8K
Twitch = 25.3K
Facebook = 743K
LinkedIn = 9K
Tiktok = 94K
GRAND TOTAL = 1,084,300
Terrifyingly, that's only a + 70,995 increase since that glowing Aug'21 RNS:
"As of August 6th, 2021, the owned audience amounted to 1,013,305 across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, Twitch, LinkedIn and CRM."
This is all information hiding in plain sight, and all of the IR focus has been on revenue (as it should be), but nobody has been bothering to track their social media figures/claims.
If you go all the way back to Guild's Prospectus (Oct'20), it's laid out here:
"As at 9 September 2020 the Company has 15,350 registered fans who have signed up to its membership fan club. The Company expects to have around 1,000,000 registered fans, and a global audience (individuals who have watched one or more of the Company’s teams in competition on at least one occasion) of around 10,000,000, by the end of the first twelve months following launch."
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/619bb5e77784bc48f0fd2841/t/62165c26e1181e0ace60f0be/1645632555502/prospectus.pdf
Based on Guild's projections, I would estimate their Year 2 Owned Audience target would be 1.8M-2.5M and their Year 3 Owned Audience target at 3-4M. But here we are, still sitting at 1,084,
Cliveas, let's avoid the name-calling and examine the facts. Guild just announced an increase of 1.7 million in social followers yet all of the publicly available data completely contradicts the statement. You don't find that to be odd? If you have data that proves their claim, please enlighten me.
This is a highly dubious RNS.
1) "Guild Studios has delivered campaigns and activations for high profile brands including Samsung UK, Coca-Cola, Sky Broadband, Subway"
This is 100% Guild's existing partner base and therefore can only read semantically as a win. The point of a studio spinoff is to bring in additional or incremental business, meaning sponsors other than the above. There is not one single example listed, which doesn't look like progress. And despite the original RNS' wording, my guess is this 1.1M (USD btw) is part of the overall brand deals.
2) "The success of Guild Studios has been additionally responsible for a significant increase in Guild's social media engagement in 2023... Guild's number of followers across its owned and operated channels has increased by 1.7 million in H2 2023 and remains on an upward trajectory."
This is a blatant lie. All of Guild's social figures are publicly available, so I don't know why they would tout such a thing. After taking a look at all of Guild's channels, their aggregate followership is roughly flat YoY (Dec22-Dec23).
IG = +1800 (flat)
Twitter/X = +1000 (flat)
Twitch = +2000 (flat)
Facebook = -10000 (a huge decrease)
Tiktok = +15000 (a healthy increase)
Youtube = +2800 (flat)
Total 12-Month Aggregate Followership = +12600
What is going on here???
Nice Fortnite placement, but this should've been an RNS Reach.
The $400,000 prize money is split between Chico and his teammate ($200,000 ea), and Guild only receives 10% of that ($20,000), which is not market-moving news.
This is not good. Rory was the lifeblood of Guild's commercial success over the past three years.
"What a ride 🏄♂️
After 3 fantastic years, this week marks the end of my time at Guild Esports.
It's been an incredible experience and journey seeing the company go from strength to strength - from its debut on the London Stock Exchange amidst the challenges of the pandemic to launching some truly incredible partnerships with some of the globe's biggest brands.
Thank you to everyone who has been a part of it - looking forward to telling you what I have in store next! "
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7110218187597574144/
This is hardly BIG BIG news. It's incremental revenue. "Six figures" of the deal is purely value-in-kind (monitors/etc for Guild's HQ) and the cash value references their previous monitor partner Samsung, which at best was 300K annually.
"As a result of the expanded partnership, Guild will receive an increased sponsorship fee for years two and three of the Company's deal with Sky, which amounts to an increase in value on the previous six-figure deal with Samsung TV. Sky Glass will receive prominent exposure of its Glass devices across the Sky Guild Gaming Centre, Guild's state-of-the-art London HQ."
Core product update (ie Esports):
Guild Women’s Valorant fail to advance in VCT, season is over. Finished 2nd to last in Groups. Currently ranked #80.
https://twitter.com/guildesports/status/1681357616457433098?s=46&t=fo4YOiRU-x4N5EEpe5bwCQ
Guild FIFA fail to advance in the eWorld Cup, season also over. Finished last place in Groups.
https://twitter.com/guildesports/status/1681057528027787266?s=46&t=fo4YOiRU-x4N5EEpe5bwCQ
Meanwhile, Guild Rocket League’s season is also over, finishing 13th in EU.
Guild’s Fortnite players, once regularly Top 5, are ranked 79th and 147th in EU.
SHAMBOLIC
I don't see how Guild's new executive team has improved matters in any measurable way over the past 1-2 years. Let's go through the business pillars:
**Guild's core product, esports, has been absolute rubbish. The Rocket League team finished this season in 13th place / The Fortnite team is currently 21st / their best FIFA player is 7th / SIM Racing is completely irrelevant / and their womens Valorant & CSGO teams seem to play every 4 months.
**The Academy pivoted from an SVOD (ie revenue generating model at scale) service to a single isolated room in the HQ, with no attached revenue. The Guild Academy Twitter still has less than 3K followers.
**Becks: We don't need to beat this dead horse again, but at least his original agreement was restructured favourably.
**Audience: Guild's socials continue to haemorrhage users for the second consecutive year. This point is one of the scariest, because it's what sponsors rely on.
**Merchandise: Again, completely non-existent sales and revenue.
**Content and Creators: Their influencers are absolute no-names with no followings, and their programming is laughable.
Guild has had two full years to learn and pivot and yet they're still selling the same story. Sales, ironically, is the one bright spot here. But once the product itself rots, sponsors will continue to avoid Guild like the plague.
These aren't serious people.
Aside from sponsors and no Subway renewal news (yet), I'm deeply concerned about Guild's core product: esports performance. Their collective rankings have fallen off a cliff, which doesn't bode well for merch sales, fan engagement, or new sponsors.
Current EU Rankings:
Fortnite = 19th (Guild used to be 1st or 2nd regularly)
Rocket League = 17th
FIFA = 2nd
Female CSGO = No official rankings. But they're currently 5th out of the 6 teams in their group (ie won't qualify out of groups)
Female Valorant = 3rd
Talk of "this is the pivotal point" has been brought up on the LSE messageboards every month since IPO, but the SP, IR support, and earnings have all objectively gone down month after month. So despite the optimism, the results have only been pessimistic.
If Guild's Subway deal is renewed at a similar or higher rate over the next month (it's due to expire), things will look sunnier. If not, business looks grim.
https://esportsinsider.com/2021/03/guild-esports-announces-multi-million-pound-subway-deal
Respectfully @Snow1, there's nothing forward-thinking here at all. It's been a full year since announcing the CFO search.
"James Savage has resigned as the Company's executive finance director, for personal reasons, with immediate effect. An interim chief financial officer is due to start immediately and will attend all upcoming board meetings. The Company has already commenced an executive search for a permanent replacement and a further announcement will be made in due course."
https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/guild_esports/news/rns/story/rn9onnw
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I also have no recollection of an Interim CFO being appointed since then.