CMON’s H1 revenue falls almost 25% year-on-year amid heavy slump in wholesale earnings

Zombicide publisher CMON‘s mid-year revenue has fallen for the first time since the pandemic, with slumping wholesale earnings putting a dent into the company’s H1 results.

CMON posted revenue of just over $15.9m in the first half of 2024, down 24.9% compared to the roughly $21.1m it recorded in the same period in 2023.

That remains a significant amount of revenue within the board game industry, despite the drop. Earlier this year Stonemaier Games, the publisher of popular titles including Wingspan and Scythe, revealed it had total revenues of $16.7m for the entirety of 2023 – although that was down almost a third from the record $24.7m the company reached in 2021.

CMON’s wholesale revenue sank 39% in H1 2024 compared to the same period last year, falling from almost $9.7m to just $5.9m – its lowest total since the pandemic-hit first half of 2020.

Revenue from CMON’s crowdfunding campaigns, meanwhile, fell by about 9.7% in H1 year-on-year, from about $11m to just over $9.9m – although that figure is still well above the roughly $6m and $6.4m it recorded in H1 of 2021 and 2022 respectively.

Lower revenue also saw CMON’s after-tax profit fall to about $174,000, down more than 39% from almost $287,000 last year, but ahead of the roughly $134,000 and $35,700 after-tax profits it posted in 2022 and 2021.

In April this year CMON posted revenue of $45m for the entirety of 2023, roughly flat compare to 2022’s $45.3m. The company would need to secure more than $29.1m in revenue in H2 2024 to reach a similar total this year.

The proportion of CMON’s H1 revenue brought in by crowdfunding campaigns has been steadily rising in recent years, growing from 40% in H1 2021 to 62.6% in the first six months of this year.

In February this year CMON revealed it had ended 12 years of running crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter – which had raised more than $108m in total – in favour of signing an exclusivity deal with crowdfunding rival Gamefound.

CMON’s shift to Gamefound had a relatively slow start, with its H1 campaigns for Masters of the Universe: The Board Game – Clash For Eternia, Degenesis: Clan Wars and God of War: The Board Game marking the first time since late 2018 that the company had three sub-$1m crowdfunding campaigns in a row.

The company has had a far more successful second half of the year for crowdfunding so far, however, pulling in about $1.8m for A Song of Ice & Fire: Tactics – A Tabletop Miniatures Skirmish Game, and over $4.4m for DC Super Heroes United.

A CMON spokesperson would not comment on whether the H1 results indicated a shift from the company away from wholesale in favour of a stronger focus on crowdfunding, or whether CMON considered this a ‘one-off’ set of results, with wholesale sales expected to return in H2 or across 2025.

The spokesperson said, “Being a listed company, we can’t comment on any operational issues and we can’t interpret our own numbers beyond what was already disclosed. “

They were also unable to shed any light on CMON’s announcement in July that it had entered a non-binding agreement to sell some of its intellectual properties in a $12m deal. That agreement is expected to be made definitive by the end of October, the firm said at the time.