Now comes the "but". But one of the reasons for CIG to post a financial report like it has every year since the first tranche of Calder investment money arrived in 2018 is to make sure potential investors can do their due diligence before making investment plans. I would have stated "every December since 2018," but last year the company waited until 2 January 2024 to post the public financial report for 2022 on its corporate website. And this year CIG will post the information later still.
The year 2023 had a big question. Did Cloud Imperium expand too fast? According to the 2022 financial report, CIG's workforce headcount went from 860 at the end of 2022 to over 1100 at the end of 2023. As best as I can tell, the added labor costs would have added between $21 million and $26 million to CIG's 2023 budget. Add in that cash shop sales in 2023 only increased by $4 million and one has to wonder how much money CIG lost in 2023. After all, in 2022 Cloud Imperium's financial report only showed a profit of $1.3 million.
A conspiracy theorist would jump on the evidence so far and shout to the world Chris Roberts is trying to hide how badly CIG is doing by hiding the evidence from players. I'm not such a theorist, however. I will admit the theory fits Occam's razor in that, all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the best explanation for a phenomenon.
I do have two facts on my side suggesting all other things are not equal. The first is CIG has still not submitted its group of companies accounts with UK Companies House. For the 2022 accounts, CIG did not file until 3 March 2024. The second is the mid-year acquisition of Turbulent for $CA 9.8 million ($USD 7.4 million) plus stocks.
While Occam's razor is a fine principle to live by, many times Hanlon's razor applies. We saw an example last year with the late submission of the 2022 accounts. Turns out, amongst a host of issues, the new auditors found an accounting mistake stretching back 5 years. And honestly, I'm not too surprised at the lateness of the 2023 reports due to the complications the Turbulent sale brought to the situation. If the auditors from PriceWaterhouseCooper are not tearing their hair out trying to explain things to CIG, I'd be surprised. After all, the possibility exists the Calders' put option for both 2025 and 2028 are causing friction and delays.
I do need to conclude with a poke at the creators who may try to excuse publishing the financial data in January as "business as normal." I actually watched a YouTube video where the commentator attempted to tell the audience this. So for my own sanity I will record the publication dates of previous financial reports on CIG's corporate website here, along with handy links to save people, including myself, time.
And while I'm on a history kick, here are the dates going back to 2015 for the submission of accounts to Companies House. The dates are the dates posted to the Companies House website, so the days submitted are usually 5 working days earlier.
- Thru 31 December 2015 - 5 January 2017
- Thru 31 December 2016 - 24 October 2017
- Thru 31 December 2017 - 26 October 2018
- Thru 31 December 2018 - 10 October 2019
- Thru 31 December 2019 - 6 January 2021
- Thru 31 December 2020 - 14 October 2021
- Thru 31 December 2021 - 10 January 2023
- Thru 31 December 2022 - 11 March 2024
And since the time in the UK is now past 6pm on a Friday, I feel pretty safe in posting this article now. So from my bunker in an undisclosed location, I'll keep waiting for the financial information I need to close out 2023.
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