AGI IS A LOST CAUSE

AGI has lost the plot and has absolutely no hope of ever recovering!!!!

Those might be harsh words but I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.

For those that think there is some hope for AGI I ask you to consider the following:

1. AGI's fortunes have been on a downward spiral since 2014. Don't believe me--check out MaxGaming data going back to 2013/2014 and you'll see that the industry KPI for pokie games know as T/O ratio has been in a consistent and rapid decline to the point where they are pretty much the worst performing games in the industry. Even some of their US competitors who have no serious operations in AU have games that perform better.

2. AGI (or should I say Novomatic) has recently shown Danny Gladstone the exit and appointed a Novomatic stooge as the new CEO. A few things to consider here: Danny Gladstone was the CEO at the helm and was ultimately responsible for allowing AGI to go down the toilet and not capitalise on there domination of the AU market back during the period 2011-13. For those that know the industry they will appreciate that AGI was far more successful that ALL during that period yet the CEO at the time failed to make hey while the sun shined. Need I remind everyone that Danny Gladstone is now Chairman!!! As for the new CEO, do a little research on the internet and you'll quickly realise that he has only ever been a salesman selling pokies in Europe for Novomatic--a privately held company that derives around only about 2% of its sales from casinos that it DOES NOT own. I ask, what experience does the new CEO have in the highly competitive markets of AU and the US. What does he know about running a publicly listed company that is focused on the AU and US markets????

3. The new CEO has been in the role for coming up on 6 months. You'd reckon he'd have come out with a high level strategy by now yet the only thing that I have heard and read is that he intends to invest more in R&D. Really, even blind Freddy could tell you that AGI needs to invest in R&D (how much is the new CEO being payed?) but what is more troubling is that spending more on R&D is in of itself not AGI's problem. The question is where are they going to spend the R&D dollars...are they going to invest more R&D dollars into the same B grade game development team that is currently developing they crap products AGI is turning out??? The new CEO has not articulated any detail on where this extra R&D spend is going and I'm not sure he is capable of doing so.

4. Sure to be successful in the land based gaming industry you need good games, but this is a simplistic view of the world and it takes more than just a good game to be a long term successful gaming company--don't believe me, re-read point 2 above. AGI had ALL on their knees in 2011 - 2013 and failed to capitalise on that position under Danny Gladstone. To be successful in the long term in gaming you need some seriously smart people--not just good game designers. You think ALL got to where it is today because they just employed good game designers?? Let's look at the AGI executive team--well the chairman is Danny Gladstone, the new CEO is just a long term sales man with little (or no) strategic experience running a publicly listed company deriving its revenue out of the US and AU, the CFO is Mark Ludski (not sure if any of you have met him but he's a complete embarrassment). Don't believe me, go to the AGI AGM next week and talk to me. Who else is on their executive team---I've got no idea, do you?

5. Online--so ALL has just recently come out and announced a massive result and lot of which has been driven by their online operations. Let's look at AGI, what the hell are they doing online??? I've got no idea because unlike ALL who have publicly released detailed of their online strategy--AGI has not done so. A quick search on the internet reveals that a Jason Lim is running online--a quick look at his LinkedIn profile will quickly reveal he's not exactly a high caliber person to be running an online gaming operation.

6. AGI has made various public statements regarding the importance of the AU market. While clearly MaxGaming data shows AGI games are just not hitting the mark with punters this dismal state of affairs with games reinforces the importance of a good sales team. After all, a high performing game will sell itself. However, I ask the question: what changes have been made in the ANZ sales team??? Word on the street tells me that AGI still has the same bunch of washed up gaming industry pensioners running sales with no changes having been made in many years. I guess with the new CEO being an old sales man he'll always side with sales and their excuses instead of accepting the fact they are part of the problem.

7. Product: my final question is: who the hell is running product development over at AGI--their hardware absolutely stinks and their games suck. Surely such an important issue is the responsibility of someone on the executive...who is direct that--the new CEO, the CFO or heaven forbid sales!!!

Anyway, I have a meeting next week with a few AGI employees and I'm looking forward to getting the low down on what's going on there. should make for an interesting meeting and I will post up here the key points of that meeting.