Long time lurker, first time poster. I thought I would give my perspective on some of the statements made here regarding where Ainsworth currently sits in relation to some of the things that have happened historically, specifically in AU domestic. I think a lot of the statements are, in some form, apologia for the gross mismanagement of the company as well as misleadingly optimistic about the future of the company.
By way of background, AGI has been struggling immensely in domestic AU and North America, though it continues to do pretty well in the LATAM markets.
Claim: Aristocrat's domination of AU stuttered and the company fell on hard times, but eventually righted the ship. Ainsworth could do something similar.
From what I gather, this refers to the post-Indian Dreaming boom of 2010 where ALL's ship share tumbled and for the first time in recent memory (or, maybe the first time ever?) they were not the #1 provider in AU. Of course, ship share is a lagging indicator, and ALL's problems started well before the 2010 numbers.
Even so, the differences between Aristocrat's hardships and Ainsworth's are night and day. ALL was never worse than second place, closely trailing IGT briefly (in 2010) and then AGI (in 2013) briefly before re-capturing the market. ALL's ship share has always been north of 20%. Contrast this to today, where Ainsworth is tracking at about 10% and is 4th in market, on a steep downward trend. Ainsworth right now ships half as many units as Aristocrat did in Aristocrat's worst days.
Claim: Aristocrat righted the ship solely with Lightning Link.
Aristocrat's recovery started in 2011 as they gained roughly 35-40% yoy in shipshare. This was years before Lightning Link came to fruition.
Of course, Aristocrat started absolutely dominating the market in 2014, and a lot of people will point out that this is the first year where Lightning's box movement were reported on earnings. Lightning is undoubtedly one of the top performing games of all time and moved an unimaginable number of machines for ALL, however there are a number of innovations that occurred around this time which contributed to their success. Specifically, the release of the Helix coincided with this. Lightning Link is one of the most influential games ever made, however had it never been invented, Aristocrat would likely still be the #1 manufacturer at this point in time.
Claim: All it takes is for Ainsworth to produce a Lightning Link-quality game to even out the playing field.
This is true for any company, of course, although games like Lightning Link are very rare and occur only once every few years. Previous to that was 88 Fortunes and Sci Games (which eventually became the owner of Star through a series of acquisitions) is also having dwindling ship share, which proves that dethroning the king game can lead to eventual floorspace maintenance problems for the company that held the top spot.
However, I have to ask why Ainsworth will be the company that releases the next Lightning Link? Their Max Gaming performance on their new releases - Kanga Cash and Crazy Jackpots - are embarrassing. Their fleet performance is so bad that most of the CY19 and CY20 developments will be at free or discounted conversions to maintain floorspace, and not releasing product. Even if Ainsworth did have the next Lightning Link, they wouldn't move anywhere near the number of boxes Aristocrat did simply because so many conversions would be needed to restore fleet performance.
Of course, a smash hit isn't the only thing that can lead to success. Incremental growth and innovation can lead to success too. Unfortunately, with the Evo just being released, it'll be another 2-4 years before Ainsworth has another shot at a dual screen cabinet release. With the Evo being released so quickly after the A600, many operators have to feel burned that they invested tens of thousands of dollars on a cabinet that was replaced in such a short amount of time. Performance of recent releases show a trend going in the wrong direction, with no clear remedy and no ideas to address these issues. I assume at this point, everyone is just waiting for a new C-suite to come in and fix things, though it looks like it'll take about 3-5 years of solid decision making before Ainsworth is even in a spot to where it could be catapulted to the top spot.
Again, these are just my perspectives from someone who knows a bit about the industry. I wouldn't recommend anyone take anything on this message board at face value, including my posts, but everything discussed is verifiable through Max Gaming and earnings reports.
Disclaimer: the performance and ship share numbers are generally in reference to NSW specifically / exclusively, though I believe these trends follow(ed) in QLD and VIC markets.
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