TonyTempah Posted June 20 Share Posted June 20 Snail, Inc. Reports First Quarter 2024 Financial Results — Snail, Inc Highlights I picked up. Year on Year revenues up by 4%... Even after all the hype around the launch of ASA and DLCs. Ark revenue increased by $5.1m EBITDA of -$1.9m, so after all bills, costs taxes etc, Snail made a loss of one point nine million dollars. With all the new player and DLC revenue they got since Christmas for ASA (plus a bit of revenue from ASE sales) they are still in the red. They would need to sell 380,000 Pyromanes to make up this loss. What's missing is their "Forward Looking Statements" I.e. what they are planning to do and what impact this would have on business. This does not look like fat cats lining their pockets or refuelling their private jets. This looks like a business that has taken a wrong turn and doubled down in the hope of recovering losses and failing. One might even say, desperate. I'm not saying the wheels have come off but, it's looking quite wobbly. 1 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ckyBandit Posted June 20 Share Posted June 20 (edited) The wheels have been off since they decided to close down ASE and charge for ASA. If things were going well, they would have just went ahead with making ASA a free upgrade like it was planned to be originally. But Shi has been in desperation mode since the failure of his smartcar endeavor, so ASA soley exists to make them as much money as possible, not deliver a quality polished game they can be proud of. Its pretty obvious with the road they've decided to go down, introducing ptw dinos and loot boxes and we're only on the 3rd map. I certainly dont see the game getting LESS monetized in the future. Edited June 20 by St1ckyBandit 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zapha Posted June 21 Share Posted June 21 There must be other reasons than profit for them to run ARK. Most other MMOs have currencies and markets, but not ARK. Maybe the donor is more interested in recording the behaviour data of the players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhotekPlays Posted June 21 Share Posted June 21 i am open for business. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyTempah Posted June 21 Author Share Posted June 21 7 hours ago, Zapha said: There must be other reasons than profit for them to run ARK. Most other MMOs have currencies and markets, but not ARK. Maybe the donor is more interested in recording the behaviour data of the players. A business can be non profit but not making a loss. A business can make a loss as if the long-term plan returns a profit. If Snail are selling meta data that would show up in the financial report Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyTempah Posted June 21 Author Share Posted June 21 21 minutes ago, PhotekPlays said: i am open for business. I would like to buy. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyTempah Posted June 21 Author Share Posted June 21 21 hours ago, St1ckyBandit said: The wheels have been off since they decided to close down ASE and charge for ASA. If things were going well, they would have just went ahead with making ASA a free upgrade like it was planned to be originally. But Shi has been in desperation mode since the failure of his smartcar endeavor, so ASA soley exists to make them as much money as possible, not deliver a quality polished game they can be proud of. Its pretty obvious with the road they've decided to go down, introducing ptw dinos and loot boxes and we're only on the 3rd map. I certainly dont see the game getting LESS monetized in the future. This actually gave me a different perspective on things. The Devs have their priorities decided for them. Hence the Fortnitification. However, it isn't working or at least not so far. What happens if they loose another couple of Million this quarter? If they haven't managed to generate enough profit to recoup losses they will be considering liquidation. We could then find ourselves in the same situation as Kerbal 2 players with no updates and devs finding new jobs... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CptYarrr Posted June 21 Share Posted June 21 44 minutes ago, TonyTempah said: I would like to buy. A hamburger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Volunteer Moderator Joebl0w13 Posted June 21 Volunteer Moderator Share Posted June 21 3 hours ago, PhotekPlays said: i am open for business. 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zapha Posted June 21 Share Posted June 21 5 hours ago, TonyTempah said: A business can be non profit but not making a loss. A business can make a loss as if the long-term plan returns a profit. If Snail are selling meta data that would show up in the financial report Information is the new oil, monetary profits become secondary. They want to sell us all this new AI stuff. ARK is a great testing ground for studying humans behaviour in synthetic worlds and how to increase acceptance of this new technologies. It could be Bill Gates paying the ARK server fees. 1 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave192 Posted June 26 Share Posted June 26 (edited) Ark is a social experiment to see just how much poop an addicted gamer will take before they truly give up. I cant fathom any other explanation as to why they treat their customer base so poorly, and continue to do so despite the constant moaning and complaints of their subjects. Edited June 26 by Dave192 1 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyTempah Posted July 1 Author Share Posted July 1 https://investor.snail.com/node/7696/html Snail's share price is in the toilet and the US Securities and exchange commission don't like stinky shares. They now have 180 days to get their shares from $0.001 to $1 or they will get delisted from NASDAQ. So given their losses already with ASA and DLC adoption not being what is needed to change the business, what can they do other than sell the publishing rights to Ark and Atlas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CptYarrr Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 4 hours ago, TonyTempah said: https://investor.snail.com/node/7696/html Snail's share price is in the toilet and the US Securities and exchange commission don't like stinky shares. They now have 180 days to get their shares from $0.001 to $1 or they will get delisted from NASDAQ. So given their losses already with ASA and DLC adoption not being what is needed to change the business, what can they do other than sell the publishing rights to Ark and Atlas? They need to pull a pyrorabbit out of the hat. And fast. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyTempah Posted July 1 Author Share Posted July 1 25 minutes ago, CptYarrr said: They need to pull a pyrorabbit out of the hat. And fast. OK. Bear with me on this... Electrobat! Shoulder mount fires lightning bolts. Full size is flyable and generates charge that can be used to instantly stun a Giga. Passively powers a Tek Replicator and generates Element if you put spark powder in it. $10! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CptYarrr Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 1 hour ago, TonyTempah said: OK. Bear with me on this... Electrobat! Shoulder mount fires lightning bolts. Full size is flyable and generates charge that can be used to instantly stun a Giga. Passively powers a Tek Replicator and generates Element if you put spark powder in it. $10! Dude! Excellent idea! How about a seasonpass. With guaranteed maps for the next 7 years. Only $399! Plus a chibi. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pipinghot Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 (edited) 9 hours ago, TonyTempah said: Snail's share price is in the toilet and the US Securities and exchange commission don't like stinky shares. They now have 180 days to get their shares from $0.001 to $1 or they will get delisted from NASDAQ. My personal opinion is that this is what they want, to be delisted and take the company private. This could involve an additional layer of shenanigans with some form of bankruptcy (which could very well let them shrug off current debt load) or it might be as simple as getting delisted and then using private equity to pay off their current debts. Mind you, I don't know exactly who constitutes "they" at this point, not sure what stake the 4 founders of WC still have in WC/Snail. For starters there's Shi Hai (and his wife) who effectively own all of Snail China (I think), all of Snail USA and something like 97% of all WC shares. At this point, Shi has a long history of making money for himself even on failing games/ventures. For example, look at how much money the parent game Snail (China) has made on games that they never finished and ultimately shut down, Snail has a solid history of abandoning games & players. Even the electric car company that failed doesn't tell us anything about his personal net worth. The visible fortune of the companies he owns, or has owned, are not a good metric to measure his own personal fortune. Like with most people who play the "I'm a rich person game" at his level, his personal finances are completely opaque. Beyond Shi, there are the four founders of WC. I've never seen any good reporting on their personal net worth's, whether their own fortunes have risen & fallen with WC or whether they're all made good money in spite of WC's business failings. This is, after all, a game that made at least $2B during the good times, if those 4 people were at all smart they took home a bunch of money that they moved into other investments. So, whoever "they" might be at this point in time, there's no evidence to believe that getting delisted will hurt any of them financially, and there are good reasons to believe that they are tanking the stock in order to privatize the company (because any money that they could have made by the company being public they already made some time ago). Getting delisted isn't the end of a company (unfortunately), quite often it's the very thing that gives the founders/owners an opportunity to open up other avenues of reaping profits from the company. After all, it's so much easier to be shady and underhanded when you don't have to deal with the fiduciary and reporting requirements of being a public company. For all we know, ASA was nothing more than a dog & pony show, designed to present the appearance that they were trying hard to save the company when in reality they knew that they were moving towards privatization all along. I know that sounds like a conspiracy theory (and it might very well be, I would be more than happy to be wrong about this) but owners of companies do these sorts of things all the time (especially nowadays, when so much of the business world is rushing headlong away from public companies and towards private equity ownership). I could be wrong, maybe they really are going down the drain honestly and some other company will buy the properties (and if that happens there's a good chance it will be by some other unsavory company like Tencent or Ubisoft that won't really improve the game). But hey, maybe ARK etc. could get bought by a better company... I just wouldn't bet my marble collection on that outcome. 9 hours ago, TonyTempah said: So given their losses already with ASA and DLC adoption not being what is needed to change the business, what can they do other than sell the publishing rights to Ark and Atlas? They have plenty of options. Even if their failures are 100% honest that doesn't mean they'll lose control of WC nor lose control of ARK, etc. I would like to see that happen, I'm thinking that even Tencent would be better than Snail, but it would be surprising if any that actually happened. Edited July 1 by Pipinghot 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ckyBandit Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 I'd love to see a true sequel to Ark from another studio/dev team and publisher. WC had their chance. Good concepts but poor execution. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyTempah Posted July 2 Author Share Posted July 2 My opinion is that there are two factions, the creators of Ark and the publishing business. CoA want to make an improvement of the game they put their heart and soul in to originally. They appreciate the need to monetize but, ultimately just want more people to play their game. PB understand that this came from a passion project that caught fire with a market and is a vehicle to make money. They look to other game business models and see the gaps in ASE that could have made money. They take in the entire game playing market and want to address that, not just the OG players or general dino enjoyers. Hence the Mighty Morphing Mickey Mouse Fornitification of ASA. PB are telling CoA to make stuff they can monetize and they are doing that begrudgingly, a necessary evil. QA are probably on medical leave, because of stress, on rotation, leaving one person working on any given week. As for @pippinghot's Snail shenanigan conspiracy theory, this could be projecting more thought/intelligence/strategy on Snail than is actually the case. Having worked at big shiny companies in my past, sometimes things are a total clusterraptor behind the scenes and there is actually no plan other than to survive another week. Re the Electrus Noctilio, I can program in Basic, will that be OK to build DLC on? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noneya98777777 Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 i believe snail makes wild card do these stupid crap, paid dinos, dumb bobs tails etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St1ckyBandit Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 4 hours ago, noneya98777777 said: i believe snail makes wild card do these stupid crap, paid dinos, dumb bobs tails etc. Thats fine but the delays, bugs, and poor optimization isnt Shi's fault. The dev team and publisher have both been sub par going all the way back to the beginning. Again, amazing concepts, but there's never been solid execution to realize all those good ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyTempah Posted August 5 Author Share Posted August 5 38/180 days to delisting from Nasdaq. Average share price is still on a downward trajectory. Fun fact, You can comment of Snail Games in MSN... https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/stockdetails/fi-c7eyvh?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&id=c7eyvh&duration=1M1H#comments Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMoschopsGuy Posted August 5 Share Posted August 5 (edited) On 7/1/2024 at 8:54 PM, CptYarrr said: Dude! Excellent idea! How about a seasonpass. With guaranteed maps for the next 7 years. Only $399! Plus a chibi. Honestly i'm expecting them announcing some kind of season pass like Bob's Tall Tales for both parts of Genesis when they release. Edited August 5 by TheMoschopsGuy 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CptYarrr Posted August 5 Share Posted August 5 1 hour ago, TheMoschopsGuy said: Honestly i'm expecting them announcing some kind of season pass like Bob's Tall Tales for both parts of Genesis when they release. Agreed. Yet, they will shoot themselves in the foot with that since they stated all maps will be released for the price we paid as a basegame. Then again, Snail is known for breaking promisses. On the other hand, I bought premium maps and those modders done one hell of a job. Those maps run way better, look alot more better and are waaaaaaay nicer then any of the maps WildCard makes. When something is unclear, they have the balls of recognizing issues and helping out instantly. An example of how things should be done by Snail. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyTempah Posted August 6 Author Share Posted August 6 16 hours ago, CptYarrr said: An example of how things should be done by Snail. That's the beauty of a strong modding community. Modders don't have the constraints that the core developers have and can embrace creativity. If nobody likes the mod then the world moves on. If it proves popular the devs can yoink it in to the core game and/or monetise it. The problem for ASA is that less people are playing it every month. The paid content might seem successful and attractive to those that still play (me included) but it hasn't brought in new players or the old players back to stay. The market for paid content is shrinking here. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyTempah Posted October 22 Author Share Posted October 22 It's a shock turnaround for Snail's share prices! With weeks to go until being delisted from NYSE the share price suddenly jumped up to exceed $1 for the first time in ages. How? Difficult to know but, a generic share trading app came up with this... "Snail, Inc.'s share price has seen a recent increase due to several positive developments. The company reported significant revenue growth from their game “ARK: Survival Ascended” and its premium mods. Additionally, the launch of new titles and expansions, such as the “Aberration Expansion Map” and “Bob’s Tall Tales - Steampunk Ascent,” have driven player engagement and boosted investor confidence." So concurrent player count steadily reducing, Negative reviews and poor comms don't mean a thing? The share price is strong because of what Snail have communicated out to the market? I really hope my pension fund isn't involved or I'll be working until I'm 70! Another reason for share prices to spike is if someone buys a bunch to generate a mini run. Either way I suspect shenanigans. By the way, average concurrent player count is still going down for ASA and ASE. You can confirm on Steam Charts and Battlemetrics. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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