Games Workshop Group PLC (LSE:GAW) will on Tuesday publish its first full set of results as a FTSE 100 company, capping an eventful few months for the tabletop games group.
The designer and maker of miniature figurines, founded in the 70s and listed in London in the 90s, has seen its shares soar more than 2,500% over the past decade and a total return calculated at close to 37,000% since first listing.
It was promoted from the mid-cap ranks into the blue-chip index just before Christmas, around a month after the shares reached record highs as the company revealed trading ahead of expectations in the first half of its financial year.
Revenue for this week's results was guided as climbing 10% to £260 million for the first half of the year, thanks to licence revenue jumping to "not less than" £30 million, driven by sales of the Space Marine 2 video game.
Since then, GW announced exclusive rights have been given to Amazon to adapt the Warhammer 40,000 into film and television content, with creative guidelines "mutually agreed" following discussions between the two companies since 2022 and an initial deal in late 2023.
Analysts and sector watchers said the stream of licensing revenue would, in time, be a big if somewhat risky boost to the bottom line, as it results in very little additional cost, while also potentially expanding the Games Workshop products and universe to a huge global market.
Analysts also noted significant other newsflow in the licensing sphere, with Space Marine achieving sales of 5m units, the Secret Level animation series becoming the top-listed TV show on Amazon.
Since the agreement was announced, the group also provided investors with an early Christmas present of an 80p dividend, bringing the year-to-date total to 265p, compared to 195p in the same period last year as part of the board policy of distributing "truly surplus capital".
Following all that, there may not be much more news revealed in the results, the main detail being how much pre-tax profit will overshoot the approximate guidance of £120 million given almost eight weeks ago, above the £96.1 million seen a year earlier.