Two weeks after revealing its 2024 losses could exceed $2m, CMON delays publishing annual results, citing understaffed finance department

Board game crowdfunding major CMON has followed its profit warning from earlier this month by revealing it is likely to miss its stock exchange deadline for publishing its annual financial results, saying its finance department is currently understaffed.

CMON warned in mid-March that it could face losses of more than $2m for its business activity last year, saying the rising cost of living had eaten into its revenues from tabletop game sales.

It estimated its losses for 2024 at between $1.4m and $2.1m – with the final, audited total originally set to be revealed in the company’s annual report by the end of this month.

But the Hong Kong-listed company now says it expects a delay in publishing those results, blaming “changes in certain key personnels in the financial department of the company and the company’s financial department is understaff[sic] as the company is still looking for replacements”.

It added that the delay was also partly due to being in the process of taking legal advice, after two new shareholders due to invest about $1.39m into the business had failed to hand over the money for their stakes.

Hong Kong stock exchange rules require companies to submit their annual results no later than three months after the end of the most recent financial year – in this case by March 31, 2025.

Failing to submit its annual results before the end of March will see CMON’s shares suspended from trading on the exchange until the report is published.

CMON said in an announcement to the exchange, “The board, after due and careful consideration, is of the view that it would not be appropriate for the company to publish the unaudited consolidated management accounts of the group for the year ended 31 December 2024 at this stage as such management accounts may not accurately reflect the financial performance and/or position of the group and the publication of the unaudited management accounts could cause confusion and may be misleading to the Shareholders and potential investors of the company.”

The board added that they delay “would not have any material adverse effect to the group’s business
and operation, which are continuing normally”.

The latest announcement continues a tricky start to the year for CMON, which began 2025 with an agreement to sell some its intellectual property in a $12m deal, in addition to expecting to receive the $1.39m from the new shareholders in exchange for a 16.66% stake in the business.

CMON had entered a non-binding agreement to sell the unspecified IPs last August, but terminated the arrangement last month after CMON and the unnamed buyer failed to agree terms.

The company said when the shareholder deal fell through that it was “now seeking other fundraising means to increase its general working capital” in order to enlarge its capital base, increase the overall liquidity of its shares and strengthen the company’s financial position.

It did not say why the potential shareholders had decided not to press ahead with investing in CMON.

CMON currently has 10 yet-to-deliver crowdfunding projects, which raised more than $22m, in various stages of production, with the $3.8m Zombicide: White Death the next game due to reach backers in Q2 of this year. It also has seven more titles available for pre-order, five of which are currently slated for Q2 delivery.

So far this year the company has completed a $2.85m crowdfund for Massive Darkness: Dungeons of Shadowreach on Gamefound, picking up support from more than 9,800 backers.

CMON quickly bounced back from a 17.5% revenue drop to $25.1m due to the pandemic in 2020, reaching $45.3m in 2022 and $45.1m in 2023 thanks to the success of multimillion-dollar Kickstarter campaigns for its long-running Zombicide series and games based on huge IPs such as Marvel and DC.

But last September BoardGameWire reported that CMON‘s mid-year revenue had fallen for the first time since the pandemic, to just over $15.9m, with slumping wholesale earnings putting a dent into the company’s H1 results.

CMON’s wholesale revenue sank 39% to $5.9m in H1 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, while revenue from its crowdfunding campaigns fell by about 9.7% to just over $9.9m.

The company’s cash reserves have also been diminishing, going from $3.9m at the end of 2022 to $3.1m at the end of 2023, and had fallen again to $1.9m at the halfway point of last year.

At the midpoint of the expected range, CMON’s anticipated 2024 losses are set to almost completely wipe out the company’s $1.8m profits across the previous three years combined – bringing to an end several years of improving performance as the company recovered from losses of almost $5m in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

CMON had previously scored profits of about $3.5m in 2017, roughly $2m in 2018 and around $1.88m in 2019, once one-off costs related to its transfer to the main board of the Hong Kong stock exchange in the latter year were removed.

The company made two significant acquisitions last year, buying Japon Brand, the Japanese board game collective which introduced the world to Love Letter and Machi Koro, and picking up the intellectual property rights to a pair of stalled Kickstarter projects from troubled crowdfunding specialist Mythic Games in January 2024.

CMON said at the time of that acquisition that the two games, Hel and Anastyr – which raised a combined $3.2m on Kickstarter – were not “currently ready for publication in their current state and will require substantial effort to complete them”. It has not offered Kickstarter backers of those games any further updates in the 13 months since the IP acquisition.