A model business

Not a greaaaat week for James Cleverly.

Tuesday, giving long leadership-like interviews.

Thursday, out of the race.

Still. We know how he'll be exorcising his demons this weekend ...

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WARHAMMER.

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Zero judgement here – after all, I was certainly no stranger to the world of Orcs, Space Marines and Tyranids growing up (slash don't check the games apps on my phone).

Thing is though, the business of Warhammer is (for most people) as interesting than the game itself.?

Games Workshop – the company which created Warhammer – has a business that most investors wouldn’t pay too much attention to: a niche hobby of collecting and painting models, before going to real-world high street shops to “fight” against other nerds collectors by rolling dice?

Easy to sneer, isn’t it?

Well.

It’s a business with zero debt, which manufactures everything in the UK, and is one of the few shops on the high street that’s always busy.

And it is utterly loyal to its customers – who then pour that love right back; flocking to stores, and queueing for new releases like it's a Taylor Swift show (maaaybe not a lot of overlap in those Venn diagrams).

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And over the last ten years, Games Workshop shares have gone from ￡5.50 to ￡110.10. When accounting for reinvesting dividends, it’s been the best-performing UK company over the past decade.

￡100 invested in Games Workshop 2014 would be worth over ￡3,000 today (if you’d been reinvesting dividends along the way).

It’s absolutely obliterated the FTSE All-Share; and it’s approximately tripled the returns of Apple, Amazon and Microsoft.

Who’s sneering now?