Review of the 2024 Pearl Abyss Iceland Report & Accounts - Part 2

I did a complete review of the 2024 Pearl Abyss Iceland Report & Accounts here.

In this post i wont to add a few additional items.

Are we due another impairment?

Each year Pearl Abyss has to check that the Goodwill held on the Balance Sheet can be jsutified.

Goodwill is the difference between the price paid for CCP back in 2018 less the value of the assets / liabilities of CCP in 2018.  This difference was $142m.

Each year CCP mush show that the value of the business they bought can cover this goodwill.

The value of the business bought = total cashflows that CCP will generate in the future = the sum of cashflows for the next 5 years + all cashflows in the future growing 2% pa.

In 2022 this failed and the goodwill was reduced by $50.9.

Since that time Pearl Abyss Iceland has generated losses of $39m.  Maybe this was known and so was accounted for - but i doubt it.  I suspect if we get 1 or 2 more years of this then Goodwill will need to be reduced again.

Will Eve Online go bust?

No.  Not at least in the next 12 months.

When a Report & Accounts are drawn up the assumption is that the business will trade as normal  i.e. as a "going concern".  And the management need to prove to the Auditors that this is the case.  If they cant, then all assets and liabilities need to be restated at current market value.

Pearl Abyss Iceland was drawn up assuming trading would continue as normal and management will have needed to convince the auditors.

This appears to have succeeded and i am pretty sure the Auditors would have required Pearl Abyss to demonstrate that they are will to add funds to CCP in Iceland if required.

EBITDA Trend

EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) is a common metric used to asset companies.

I took a look at the last six years:

things were looking good in 2020 when EBITDA turned solidly positive at $8.3m but has then slide back into solid negative territory.  And showing no signs of improvement in 2023 and 2024.

Pearl Abyss Group Structure

To help visualise the relationship between CCP, Pearl Abyss Iceland, all their subsidiaries and Pearl Abyss - the below diagram should help.

Within Pearl Abyss Iceland there are 3 distinct groups:

CCP is the main one - but the Accounts of CCP only shows the numbers for CCP, it does not consolidate all its subsidiaries, that is all done at the Pearl Abyss Iceland level.

Angelice Prime Foundation - I need to do more work into this.

Pearl Abyss Iceland Investment. - this is relatively new and I will see what is going on here at some point.

Review of the 2024 Pearl Abyss Iceland Report & Accounts

The Pearl Abyss Iceland and CCP Report & Accounts for the year to December 2024 came out on 7 May 2025.

Since 2021 they have come out on 30 April.  not sure why they would be a few days later this year other than to observe Fanfest was happening?

Right now i will spend 3 to 4 hours or so going over the Accounts a write the review here - so perhaps more will come out as i dig deeper later on.

But in this post we will review the 2023 Consolidated Financial Statements of Pearl Abyss Iceland.

You can access the Pearl Abyss Iceland 2024 Report & Accounts here and also I have a page on this blog that hosts all the Pearl Abyss Iceland from 2019 / CCP from 2013 to 2018 here.   They can also all be found and downloaded for free from the Iceland Company Register.


Lets first be clear as to what we are looking at in this post

. . . . . . or skip this section if you are happy to go with the flow rather than being taken through a crash course in Companies vs Subsidiaries vs Group Accounting.  Personally, I love it.

In the Icelandic Company Register system there are 3 sets of Accounts that are of interest.

the Accounts for the company CCP.

the Accounts for the company Pearl Abyss Iceland.

the Consolidated Financial statements of Pearl Abyss Iceland Group.


Quick lesson on Group vs Company, (or Consolidated Financial Statements vs Company Accounts).

The company CCP is based in Iceland and sells the game Eve Online globally as well as develops and markets the game.  It also owns other companies based such as CCP North America, CCP Games UK Ltd, CCP Platform ehf and CCP Ad Astra ehf.

The Accounts for the company CCP will only have the revenues and costs of the company CCP.  The profits and losses of these companies it owns will be included in one summary line - i.e. if CCP Games UK makes sales they will not be included in the CCP sales.  So we wont get the full picture and indeed the company Accounts of CCP.  And this will be further clouded by any sales CCP makes to these companies which is meaningless to us.

We want to look at the combined revenues and costs of CCP, not just the Icelandic entity (though it is the most important).  i.e. we want to add all the sales of CCP and all the companies it owns to get the total sales number and we want to eliminate any intercompany trading it does.

Pearl Abyss Iceland owns CCP in Iceland since it bought it back in 2019.

Again, the Accounts of Pearl Abyss Iceland will only have the revenues and costs of Pearl Abyss Iceland and a summary line showing the profits of CCP.

However, the Consolidated Financial Statements of Pearl Abyss Iceland has the combined revenues and combined costs of Pearl Abyss Iceland and all the companies its owns (so CCP and all the companies that CCP owns).  It also eliminates any revenues and costs between the companies it owns (I.e any cross border charges).  This is what we are after.

One slight wrinkle, Pearl Abyss Iceland also owns Pearl Abyss Iceland Investment and so its revenues and costs will also be included in the Consolidated Financial Statements.

Therefore, from here on in we are reviewing the Consolidated Financial Statements of Pearl Abyss Iceland.

From here on in we will call the Consolidated Financial Statements of Pearl Abyss Iceland as CCP.


Bottom line Loss of CCP (again)

There overall loss was $19.4m which compares to a loss of $18.8m in 2023, $19.0m in 2022 (and then we also had the $50m impairment write off), $7.9m in 2021, $1.3m in 2020 but a $13.6m profit in 2019 and then a small $0.7m loss in 2018 after being bought by Pearl Abyss.

The total losses since being bought by Pearl Abyss in 2018 are $106m = $56m trading losses + $50m impairment write off.

I greatly suspect this was not the plan when Pearl Abyss bought CCP in 2018 for $226m (there was also an earnout of $200m but the targets were never met so it was never paid).

To date, the total cost of CCP to Pearl Abyss has been $226 + $106 = $332m.

$19m loss in 2024

Management say that "this result is primarily due to deliberate and increased investment in multiple active development projects — including EVE Frontier, EVE Vanguard, and the Carbon open-source platform — which are scheduled to enter key release phases from mid-2025 onwards".

Summary

• Revenues were up 8% to $60m ($56m)
• Game revenues were up an impressive 13% to $55m and so back at 2020 levels but not yet the all time high in 2013 of $72m
• All Regions grew
• I suspect the 13% rise in game revenues correlates with the rise in paying account numbers vs my estimated 30% decline in 2022-2023
• Europe is declining as a % of Revenues
• Costs rose 6% in 2024 on top of a 9% rise in 2023
• Salaries are a steady 45% of total operating costs
• It is the pension / employee tax costs that brings it up to 59%
• The overall loss was $19.4m vs $18.8m in 2023
• Balance Sheet and Cashflows are cleaner in 2024
• Still Tokens on the Balance Sheet
• The Value of unused Plex (and i guess MCT) has gone up by almost 10% in 2024 despite all the efforts to reduce the hoarding
• Cash is down to $13m, they will need to raise more cash this year given i suspect they will remain loss making
• They can either raise cash by selling these tokens again or going over to South Korea to face their owners and perhaps hurtling back to put up subscription prices in a hurry!

 
Profit & Loss Account

Revenues rose 8% to $60.2m vs $56.0m 2023.

Gross profits rose 6.4% to $55.1m ($51.8m).

Hence the Gross Profit Margin fell from 92.5% t0 91.5%.  I suspect this is because the level of Royalties and licenses fell - more on that below.

Total Operating Costs were $83.9m vs $79.2m in 2023.  Therefore, Operating Costs have risen 6% on top of the 9% rise in 2023.

Government Grants added $6.6m to income in 2024 vs $6.2m in 2023.

Therefore the Operating Loss came in at $22.2m vs $21.2m in 2023.

And then interest costs, currency movements and taxes take the overall loss to $19.4m in 2024 vs a loss of $18.8m in 2023.

Revenues
 
Revenues rose 8% to $60.2m.

That is broadly what we expected quarterly updates Pearl Abyss were giving us.

The revenues from subscription and in-game sales rose an impressive 13% from $48.7m to $55.0m.  Given there has been no price rise then this would correlate with an increase in paying account numbers.  Though some way to go to catch up on the 30% loss of paying accounts (i estimated ) due to the 30% price increase back in May 2022.

So we are now back up to the recent peak of $55m game revenues in the pandemic (everyone was at home) year of 2020 but still some way to go for the $72m in 2013.

But revenues are clearly going in the right direction and for now are importantly driven by a rise in paying account numbers.

The decline in Royalties and licenses from $7.0m to $5.1m (and this was $10m back in 2021) is i suspect down to lower NetEase revenues in China being replaced by direct sales into China.  I am sort of guessing there but there is no obvious movement geographically to suggest the $2m decline in  Royalties and licenses sales obviously comes from China this time.

I am not sure what Revenues from sale of goods are (Fanfest items?) but they are deminimus now anyway.

But looking back up at that Geographic Revenues table - it seems Eve Online saw growth in every region and if we strip out the Revenues and licences we can include Asia in that statement also.

One thing that is interesting is that North America used to be 30% bigger than Europe, now it is almost double the size of Europe.  Perhaps currency plays a small part.

North America has always been around half of total Revenues.  What is going on here is that Europe is becoming a lower % of Revenues as time goes by as Asia / Rest of World grows.

Despite in 2024 Europe growing 14% vs North America a lower growth of 8%.

Gross Profit

The cost of actually running the game (as opposed to creating new code, marketing et al) is very low at around $5m in 2024 and $4m in 2023.

I suspect there is no cost attached to Royalties and licences there of the $5m cost is associated with the $55m game revenues which suggests the Eve Online is a 91% Gross Profit Margin business.

Operating Expenses

CCP now expense all their development costs (historical costs are still being held on the Balance Sheet and reduced over time).  This is a much cleaner way to account for these costs.

It would not be unrealistic for CCP to hold the costs of developing new games on the Balance Sheet and wait for the Revenues to be generated before realising those costs through the Profit & Loss Account - but this relies on these new games being successful and therefore profitable.

Costs have risen everywhere.  Overall, costs are up 6%, having been up 9% in 2023.

In these businesses the biggest cost is people, so we need to look at the above at the same time as looking at employee costs.  Much of the above lines of Operating Expenses will be people costs.

I have done some analysis which is interesting on all this:

The top rows is all data from current and historic Reports and Accounts.

Obviously i have to bring my politics into this some where - look at the bottom line.  This is the additional costs CCP must bear when they hire someone.  As well as an employees salary they also contribute to their pension funds and pay Employer Staff Taxes (in the UK this is called Employer National Insurance).  in 2024 for CCP this was 33% and was as low as 25% in 2020.  Hiring people has plenty of additional costs!

But, the main point of doing this was to observe that Salaries + these related costs as a % of total operating costs has generally been 55-59% and looks like it will be around 59% going forwards.  Salaries only as a % of total operating costs has been a remarkably steady 45%.

It looks like the average salary at CCP is $93k (hard to compare to prior years without knowing the mix changes in developers vs general staff vs marketing staff et al).

And Revenue per employee is $150k today.  It needs to be around $205k for CCP to be making some profits.  In other words, a 30% higher number.

But once again i am left with the observation that Costs are not the problem, they seem to be under control.  The problem is revenues which need to be $82m for the company to be back in profits = 30% higher than today.

And that really means paying account numbers need to be 30% higher.  It seems to me that a 5% sub price rise loses 5% of players = zero sum game.

Other Income

There is $5m-$6m of Other Income in each year which is Government Grants

Finance Costs

The Group had a $50m bank loan from Pearl Abyss itself in Korea (it used to be a bank loan but it was converted to a parent company loan in 2023).

A reasonable number of moving parts but the decline in interest cost is due to being charged 4.6% interest costs by Peal Abyss vs 4.8% by the bank + no longer paying a Guarantee fee.

Interest Income will have fallen because the cash levels have more than halved.

Foreign Currency

OK, we can't ignore this.  CCP i suspect has most of it costs in Icelandic Krona, great British Pounds and that Euro muck.  But only 28% of its Revenues are in GBP and Euros.

Lets for a moment assume the Asian currencies follow the USD - then we can say that 72% of the Revenues of this business are USD related vs lets say 90% of costs being non-USD related.

If the USD remains weak (it is down 8% vs Icelandic Krona year to date already) then this means lower revenues and because the costs move with GBP and Euros then costs wont fall at the same time.

Tax

Given the business makes a loss, in Accounting the loss is reduced by a tax rebate (in actual cash flows tax is still paid given this is a global business making sales across the world – somewhere there will be profits to tax).  This accounting rebate was $4.4m vs $2.9m in 2023.

Underlying operating loss

Add all that up and the underlying operating loss of the business fell from $18.8m to $19.4m

And this year it was driven by costs rising faster than revenues.

Therefore, if costs were somehow held flat in 2025, revenues would need to rise 30% to $83m for a profit to be made.

Balance Sheet

This year the Balance Sheet looks clean with, again, the notable exception of £37.5m long term "deferred revenue" - see below.

Non-current Assets are being depreciated as expected.

I don't see any crypto being created out of thin air this year in Intangible Assets.

Deferred Tax Assets are rising which is a function of the company generating loses and so having a "tax income" in the Profit & Loss Account.  That is not a cash item, no money is reclaimed from the Icelandic State.  Instead the "tax income" sits on the Balance Sheet as an asset and will be reduced down when the company starts making profits.

Current Assets look ok.

There seems to be a "Tax credit claim" growing to $9.4m in 2024 vs $6.2m in 2023.  Not sure what that would relate to?

Non-current liabilities has a couple of points to note.

The leases are effectively a capitalisation of the annual rents they pay for their buildings - looks ok.

The $50m borrowing is from Pearl Abyss, interest charged at 4.6%.

The $37.5m deferred revenues are proceeds from the sale of Token Warrants.  $10m was received in 2022 and $27.5m in 2023.

The notes in the Accounts spells it all out - CCP is developing a blockchain-based network and planning to issue crypto tokens on the network upon completion of the development:

Current Liabilities all look ok but lets look at the deferred income here because this gives us an idea of the amount of Omega / Plex in the game.

The $3.4m of Subscriptions is Omega that has been bought but not yet used.  It will convert to Revenues as it is used.  Accounting rules don't allow it to be recognised as Revenues before all this.

This is flat on 2023 despite a higher number of paying players.  That suggests that shorter term Omega is being purchased on average.

The In-game purchases not yet consumer i believe is Plex and i guess any real money purchases other than Omega that are not yet used.  This was higher at the end of 2024 vs 2023.  As this Plex etc is used up it will be converted into Revenues.

Cashflows

Profits are one thing but cash is real.

And the cashflow is clean this year.  A loss of $19.4m resulted in $19.4m less cash.

Nothing really to say here.  Nothing looks odd.

Other than at the start of the year the company had $33m cash and now has $13m cash.  The company will need a cash injection during the year - i don't think they will make profits this year and therefore i suspect they will burn though this $13m.

CEO Salary?

I am not here to speculate on someone’s remuneration so I will just put the item below with a few lines of text.

So, $0.9m was paid to the Directors.  I don’t think the Korean Board members will be taking any pay.  So this is the CEO and whoever else is not Korean on the Board.

One More Thing - Auditor's Fees

Firstly there are interim financial statements which we don't see.  We only see the Full Year Statements.

Secondly, and this is interesting, the fees for "Other Services" have risen by 120%.  The Auditors have clearly done some special work for the company.  Not sure what it is.

46 multiboxing . . . . . .

I came across this player, twitch channel https://www.twitch.tv/moonpire.

46 multiboxer.

Blimey.  i'll just leave it there.

Eve Podcast - Declarations of War

Back in the day the social media landscape for Eve Online was blogs and then Podcasts, now we have Twitch.

There are not so many Blogs and Podcasts these days.  But those that remain are good quality.

Declarations of War

Declarations of War is the longest running Eve Online Podcast.  And it is well worth a listen.

I am biased, i sponsor it with ISK and am a Patron.

Focuses on the stories of the day, ranging from Eve Updates, to game mechanics / actions such as wormhole evictions, to battle reports, to discussions on the Eve economy, 

And has guests on ranging from CCP Devs to other content creators (bloggers, streamers).

Most recently from CCP had EVE Game Design Director CCP Okami, EVE QA Analyst CCP Kestrel, along with Stranathor who writes the blog I wanna be a Trillionaire, so frickin' bad...

The content is informative and well researched.  The presenters have easy listening voices.

Normally between 1 and 2 hours long.

History

Started in 2010 by Alekseyev Karrde and Jimer Lins.  Now presented by Alekseyev Karrde and Zeeroak Ool

Alekseyev Karrde is the founder of Noir.. Co-founder of the Merc Contracts channel, two-time CSM representative

Zeeroak Ool is a former Noir director and CEO of Collusion.

Manufacturing - going for it

Manufacturing experiment so far

I have been trying out manufacturing over the last few months.

The Oz Show interview with Sir SmashAlot really did it for me.

I have put a character in Low-Sec to manufacture.  And i have a character in Jita to manufacture.

I have manufactured items that have sold well and i have manufactured items that have not sold at all.

My main success have come from manufacturing items that are not popular - so i am generally the only seller.

I have not tried reactions.

I have got to understand very quickly that a fair amount of the success in this venture is being able to access cheap materials.

Overall, my profits have been in the billions though my cashflow has been negative so far (i.e. i have increased my wealth but much of it is made up of items still for sale on the market).

Going to make a real effort to make this another revenue stream

Therefore, i have decided to go for it and try and make it work.

. . . . . . from the start of May (i am on holiday for 2 weeks during April so i don't want to try and start something during this time).

And what i want to do is to be able to keep a full track of what i am doing and how i am doing.

To that end, i have decided to resurrect an old account that was one of my first when i stated playing Eve Online.  I know that one of the characters is well trained in the manufacturing skills (with the other 2 characters being fully traded in Trade).

I will station this character in Jita and use this character to buy all the materials and make all Jita sales.  And i will station the other two characters in this account in two stations that i will also sell the manufactured items from - likely Dodixie and Amarr.

I will likely use existing characters to manufacture in Low Sec (and Jita) but all buying and selling will be done by this old account.

This will allow me to keep a proper set of accounts and so determine the wealth generated or not.

It will cost me an Omega each month - so that is the near term target to recover.

The strategy

I have not decided if i want to start with zero ISK like Stranathor did in this blog I wanna be a Trillionaire, so frickin' bad... when he started Industry or just finance it from my existing isk.

I like the idea of starting from zero isk - that will keep it interesting for me and allow me to move along the learning curve.

But, i know there are items i can manufacture for a few billions from time to time that will sell and make me a nice profit.

So, i think i will go for a mix.

How to fit this into my daily routine

The one thing i have found hard is to fit the manufacturing into my daily routine.

Therefore, i am likely to either do manufacturing every other day or every three days.

Month end update - March 2025

I made 80bn profits in March 2025 from which i distributed 50bn this month.  Therefore, my wealth rose by 30bn to 2.242 trillion isk.

If i just focus on the 80bn profits then an above average month and 80bn is ok by me.  Ideally i want to be making over 100bn a month but real life is getting in the way and i still have some serious competition coming into some of my markets.

I suspect April will have much the same headwinds.

Distributions

These days, the aim is to distribute my profits to the Oz Tank Show or other ventures.

In March i distributed 50bn to the The Oz Show to give away for one show.

So far i have given 388bn to Eve shows:

260bn isk to the Oz Tank Show

92.5bn to The Oz Show

20bn to the podcast Declarations of War to sponsor it.

13.2bn to the Nth_Dimensional Twitch show

1.6bn to the Raff_About_It show

The Oz Tank Show started in July 2023 and i have generated profits of 1.377 trillion in the July 2023 - March 2025 period and distributed 388bn.

So that leaves 990bn isk to distribute to some venture(s).

It is early days but the Oz Show is considering having some of its tycoons sponsor a new Corporation.  Lets see.

Six Omega Accounts to pay for / Skill Farming

In June 2024 i went for the MCT / Omega deal and have now pre-funded 6 accounts (so the 4 omega accounts and 2 alpha accounts) for 12 months.

This also took me into Skill Farming for the first time.

I spent 130bn isk on all that.  The way i accounted for this was to say that the 130bn isk was an asset spent to buy Omega and as i made profits from skill farming i would reduce this asset.

In other words, skill farming would not contribute to increasing my wealth until i had made 130bn isk profits.

I achieved that goal in January and therefore all skill farming profits i now make is profit towards increasing my wealth.

The basic numbers for March

In March i had sales of 317bn isk vs February of 314bn.  So a small rise of 1% and below my long term average of £325bn.  This reflects me being busy in real life, i suspect.

This comes to average daily sales of 10.2bn isk.  In other words, each evening i expect to see across all my accounts an additional 10bn isk (less transaction taxes) sitting on the characters to be reinvested back into the markets.

Item profits were 116bn isk which is a margin of 37% (116/317).  So above the 25% target and a pleasing result.  There will be an upwards distortion from Skill Farming in here which i am sure i could work out if i had the time.

Taxes and Courier fees came to 47bn isk.  That takes the Trading Profits to 80bn isk and so a trading margin of 25.1% (80/317).  Above the 16% target and again a pleasing result.

And then i distributed 50bn to the The Oz Show.

So a reasonable month all round.

What is needed to get wealth to rise to 100bn in a month?

In some ways, i am there now - lets see if i can get this to work.

I would need to make daily sales of 18bn on my 25% item market - that has never happened.  Therefore, to achieve 100bn profits a month i need to do one or some of three things.

1) Increase my item margin above 25% - possible but a risk.

2) Keep on doing Skill Farming - for the next 3 months i will be earning pure profits from Skill Farming, so this will be done.

3) Expand into station trading - i sort of do that but not to any big deal.  So this is possible.

4) Expand into manufacturing - which i mean to do when i get time.  The interview with Sir SmashAlot on the Oz Show was inspirational.

My Sales Strategy

I am putting more effort into designing spreadsheets using the Eve Excel Addin to both make my online time more efficient and find those items to sell in the Regions quicker.

This is allowing me to move faster each night.  Currently, i can now see which of my trades need updated and go straight to them rather than cycle through all trades.  I can also see which sales have been made so i can see if i can replace them.  I can also see what items i can buy from Jita Sell Orders to put up for sale in the trade hubs and make my target margin.

My strategy is to Buy from Sell Orders in Jita to sell in the trading hubs in other Regions.

I don't sell consumable items such as ammunition given they tend to be high volume and very competitive.  That includes ships.

I rarely sell items used as components in manufacturing because the end buyer tends to be cost conscious (and armed with spreadsheets) and able to manufacture the items themselves if market prices are too high.

I sell items that are in low supply and sell very slowly.  These items tend to have very low competition - sellers want to get cash quickly and so don't bother in these items.  If i put an item on the market and it sells in 15 days that is fine with me.

These items also tend to be price insensitive - players will buy the item almost whatever the price.  The Buyer is much more interested in getting the item to use now rather than setting off to Jita to get it cheaper.

I sell items that are typically bought to kit a ship as a player progresses or has to replace a destroyed ship / pod.

Each month i sell 20-30% of what i had to sell at the start of the month.

I have a rule that the minimum profits have to be 100m isk.  It is no use me buying items for 5m to sell them for 15m.  The profitability may be great but that won't move the dials.  That said, it is surprising how many items i can buy for 120m from Jita Sell Orders and sell for 220m in the other trading hubs.  At that isk level, players re-equipping don't care about spending an additional 100m isk to save time.

And in the secondary trading hubs Amarr / Dodixie / Rens / Hek buyers will not travel even one jump to buy a cheaper item.  For example, i can post an item for sale in the main Rens Trading up for 300m, and even if one jump away the same item is for sale for 250m the item in the main Trading Hub will still be the item sold.

Therefore, i mostly sell Implants, Blueprints, ship equipment and some structure modules.  And more recently Large Skill Injectors.

What is selling well in March

No change from February really but at some point i intend to do some proper data mining to see what is going on.

I am seeing quite intense competition in Implants in some of my trade locations - like the competitor will reduce the price by 5-10% a shot.  And also seeing competition in Blueprints in some trade locations.

Ship Equipment: doing fine over a right old range of items - afterburners, armour repairs, shield repairs, weapons are the main staples.  I suspect a bit better in March vs February.

Blueprints: these continue to plod along and generate good income for me; mostly ship blueprints and some other capital items.  Whilst they are a nice source of income they are also the slowest sellers.  Every week i am updating a price of blueprints to prevent them getting over 90 days old on the market.

Implants: still do well though i have noticed a keen competitor or two in the main trading hubs.  My experience with Implants is that they sell by the family - i.e. the alpha / beta / delta / epsilon / gamma / omega implant all sell to the same buyer at once.  So they can be good earners when they occur.  This is definitely a slowing market for me.

Mining equipment: almost nothing sold other than a few high priced items.  The competition is all over this.

Manufacturing

I am now making a fist of moving into this.

The Oz Show had a great interview with Sir SmashAlot where he talked about his manufacturing activities to the tune of making over 1 trillion profits per month!  And the author of the blog I wanna be a Trillionaire, so frickin' bad... has moved into manufacturing and is making a good job of it.

Early days, i am making some profits and will update this blog as i go.

Ideally, i want to create a process that i can scale.

Planetary Interaction

For now, i have stopped trying to make this work.

Research

For now, i have stopped trying to make this work.

Station Trading

All in Jita.  And i am not focusing on this for now, so only 23bn sales.

I don't really have a process up and running that is scalable.

My idea of station trading is not buying items when they look cheap.  For me, station trading is about sticking to the slow moving items and quite often i am the only person in Jita trying to sell an item.  Almost always Selling for over 1bn isk.

What i don't do is Investing.  I.e. i don't buy an item now i think is cheap and hold onto it to sell it a few months later when the price has risen.

Alpha Accounts

I have 1 Alpha account with a character in Venal left.  All the others were upgraded to Omega last summer to start Skill Farming.

I also added another character to that account and am training it up to 5m skill points.  The idea here is to get another set of Alpha Accounts ready for Skill Farming sometime in the future if needed.

Plex

At the start of September i bought 8000 Plex at around 5.3m each.  The main reason for doing this is to have a store of plex ready in case of any deals on the NEX store that comes along.  I now have 18,300 Plex.

Items in hanger for sale

There are a number of items that i sell that can only be sourced from Regions outside of The Forge (the home of Jita).

To make my life easier, i buy them from their home bases and have them couriered to Jita to be stored ready to be couriered to their final sale destination.

Also, given i am skill farming i have a number of Skill Extractors and Large Skill Injectors sitting in hangers waiting to be used / sold.

In all, some 460bn isk of items.

Buy Orders

Buy Orders have varied over time and peaked at around 80bn as i was also buying Skill Extractors.  However, i now have enough Skill Extractors for a few months so i have slowed down and so the Buy Orders now 59bn.

Once i get a grip, Buy Orders will also increase as i ramp up the Station Trading in Jita.

ISK

I have 109bn spare ISK kicking around.

For the last 12 months the average ISK in wallets has been over 100bn compared to around 50bn before this.

The reason for his is purely real life being busy and so not having the time to make sure everything is invested.

It feels a waste - i should have as much as i can invested.  I have Plex ready for any NES deals that come along.

If i think about this: Inventory + ISK = 460 + 109 = 569 = 25% of my wealth is sitting around not earning a return!

Current Wealth

Current wealth is 2.242 trillion ISK made up from:

• Plex held as an investment 112bn ISK
• Items in hanger for sale 459bn ISK
• Items in hanger for use in business 11bn ISK
• Omega brought forward 0bn ISK
• Buy orders on the market 59bn ISK
• items for sale 1.86 trillion ISK

• less a 20% provision 372bn ISK*

• ISK in wallet 109bn ISK

When i add up my wealth, I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to ISK or are used to generate isk that can be readily resold back onto the market.  Any ships or skills or fittings etc i buy are counted as expenses in that month.  The only exception to this rule is Blueprint Originals i use for manufacturing.  They are held at cost.

* I take a 20% provision against the items I am selling.  Eve calculates wealth by adding up the value of the sell orders hence it is possible to increase your wealth by buying an item for 100m ISK and putting a sell order for 120m ISK (in this case your wealth would increase by 20m ISK).  For me, I want my wealth to be calculated at cost.  I know that the value of my sell orders will likely fall over time as I update my orders downwards as competition reduces their prices before my items are sold.  Hence the 20% provision is my best guess as to what the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.  In an ideal world I would value my sell orders at the value which I bought the items for.

Month end update - February 2025

I made 51bn profits in February 2025 from which i distributed 15bn this month.  Therefore, my wealth rose by 36bn to 2.212 trillion isk.

If i just focus on the 51bn profits then an above average month though below what i want this days.  That saic, real life getting in the way a bit and some serious competition coming into some of my markets.  And, whilst i am here, real life is getting in the way during March.

Distributions

These days, the aim is to distribute my profits to the Oz Tank Show or other ventures.

In February i distributed 15bn to the podcast Declarations of War to sponsor it for 24 episodes.

So far i have given 338bn to other Eve shows:

260bn isk to the Oz Tank Show

42.5bn to The Oz Show

20bn to the podcast Declarations of War to sponsor it.

13.2bn to the Nth_Dimensional Twitch show

1.6bn to the Raff_About_It show

The Oz Tank Show started in July 2023 and i have generated profits of 1.298 trillion in the July 2023 - February 2025 period and distributed 338bn.

So that leaves 960bn isk to distribute to some venture(s).

It is early days but the Oz Show is considering having some of its tycoons sponsor a new Corporation.  Lets see.

Six Omega Accounts to pay for / Skill Farming

In June 2024 i went for the MCT / Omega deal and have now pre-funded 6 accounts (so the 4 omega accounts and 2 alpha accounts) for 12 months.

This also took me into Skill Farming for the first time.

I spent 130bn isk on all that.  The way i accounted for this was to say that the 130bn isk was an asset spent to buy Omega and as i made profits from skill farming i would reduce this asset.

In other words, skill farming would not contribute to increasing my wealth until i had made 130bn isk profits.

I achieved that goal in January and therefore all skill farming profits i now make is profit towards increasing my wealth.

The basic numbers for February

In February i had sales of 314bn isk vs January of 386bn.  So a fall of 19% and below my long term average of £325bn.  This reflects me being busy in real life, i suspect.

This comes to average daily sales of 11.2bn isk.  In other words, each evening i expect to see across all my accounts an additional 11bn isk (less transaction taxes) sitting on the characters to be reinvested back into the markets.

Item profits were 79bn isk which is a margin of 25% (79/314).  So at the 25% target.  There will be an upwards distortion from Skill Farming in here which may actually mean that my normal business was running below 25% - that would not surprise me, there was heavy competition in places.

Taxes and Courier fees came to 27bn isk.  That takes the Trading Profits to 51bn isk and so a trading margin of 16.1% (51/314).  At the 16% target.

And then i distributed 15bn to the podcast Declarations of War.

So an ok month at best but below what i hope for.  Could have been better had real life not gotten in the way.

What is needed to get wealth to rise to 100bn in a month?

In some ways, i am there now - lets see if i can get this to work.

I would need to make daily sales of 18bn on my 25% item market - that has never happened.

Therefore, to achieve 100bn profits a month i need to do one or some of three things.

1) Increase my item margin above 25% - possible but a risk.

2) Keep on doing Skill Farming - for the next 5 months i will be earning pure profits from Skill Farming, so this will be done.

3) Expand into station trading - i sort of do that but not to any big deal.  So this is possible.

4) Expand into manufacturing - which i mean to do when i get time.  The interview with Sir SmashAlot on the Oz Show was inspirational.

My Sales Strategy

I am putting more effort into designing spreadsheets using the Eve Excel Addin to both make my online time more efficient and find those items to sell in the Regions quicker.

This is allowing me to move faster each night.  Currently, i can now see which of my trades need updated and go straight to them rather than cycle through all trades.  I can also see which sales have been made so i can see if i can replace them.  I can also see what items i can buy from Jita Sell Orders to put up for sale in the trade hubs and make my target margin.

My strategy is to Buy from Sell Orders in Jita to sell in the trading hubs in other Regions.

I don't sell consumable items such as ammunition given they tend to be high volume and very competitive.  That includes ships.

I rarely sell items used as components in manufacturing because the end buyer tends to be cost conscious (and armed with spreadsheets) and able to manufacture the items themselves if market prices are too high.

I sell items that are in low supply and sell very slowly.  These items tend to have very low competition - sellers want to get cash quickly and so don't bother in these items.  If i put an item on the market and it sells in 15 days that is fine with me.

These items also tend to be price insensitive - players will buy the item almost whatever the price.  The Buyer is much more interested in getting the item to use now rather than setting off to Jita to get it cheaper.

I sell items that are typically bought to kit a ship as a player progresses or has to replace a destroyed ship / pod.

Each month i sell 20-30% of what i had to sell at the start of the month.

I have a rule that the minimum profits have to be 100m isk.  It is no use me buying items for 5m to sell them for 15m.  The profitability may be great but that won't move the dials.  That said, it is surprising how many items i can buy for 120m from Jita Sell Orders and sell for 220m in the other trading hubs.  At that isk level, players re-equipping don't care about spending an additional 100m isk to save time.

And in the secondary trading hubs Amarr / Dodixie / Rens / Hek buyers will not travel even one jump to buy a cheaper item.  For example, i can post an item for sale in the main Rens Trading up for 300m, and even if one jump away the same item is for sale for 250m the item in the main Trading Hub will still be the item sold.

Therefore, i mostly sell Implants, Blueprints, ship equipment and some structure modules.  And more recently Large Skill Injectors.

What is selling well in February

I am seeing quite intense competition in Implants in some of my trade locations - like the competitor will reduce the price by 5-10% a shot.  And also seeing competition in Blueprints in some trade locations.

February was a right mix of sales.  Implant and Blueprints did ok, as did other items.  A generally broad level of sales.

Ship Equipment: doing fine over a right old range of items - afterburners, armour repairs, shield repairs, weapons are the main staples.

Blueprints: these continue to plod along and generate good income for me; mostly ship blueprints and some other capital items.  Whilst they are a nice source of income they are also the slowest sellers.  Every week i am updating a price of blueprints to prevent them getting over 90 days old on the market.

Implants: still do well though i have noticed a keen competitor or two in the main trading hubs.  My experience with Implants is that they sell by the family - i.e. the alpha / beta / delta / epsilon / gamma / omega implant all sell to the same buyer at once.  So they can be good earners when they occur.  This is definitely a slowing market for me.

Mining equipment: almost nothing sold other than a few high priced items.  The competition is all over this.

Manufacturing

I am now making a fist of moving into this.

The Oz Show had a great interview with Sir SmashAlot where he talked about his manufacturing activities to the tune of making over 1 trillion profits per month!  And the author of the blog I wanna be a Trillionaire, so frickin' bad... has moved into manufacturing and is making a good job of it.

Early days, i am making some profits and will update this blog as i go.

Ideally, i want to create a process that i can scale.

Planetary Interaction

For now, i have stopped trying to make this work.

Research

For now, i have stopped trying to make this work.

Station Trading

All in Jita.  And i am not focusing on this for now, so only 20bn sales.

I don't really have a process up and running that is scalable.

My idea of station trading is not buying items when they look cheap.  For me, station trading is about sticking to the slow moving items and quite often i am the only person in Jita trying to sell an item.  Almost always Selling for over 1bn isk.

What i don't do is Investing.  I.e. i don't buy an item now i think is cheap and hold onto it to sell it a few months later when the price has risen.

Alpha Accounts

I have 1 Alpha account with a character in Venal left.  All the others were upgraded to Omega last summer to start Skill Farming.

I also added another character to that account and am training it up to 5m skill points.  The idea here is to get another set of Alpha Accounts ready for Skill Farming sometime in the future if needed.

Plex

At the start of September i bought 8000 Plex at around 5.3m each.  The main reason for doing this is to have a store of plex ready in case of any deals on the NEX store that comes along.  I now have 18,300 Plex.

Items in hanger for sale

There are a number of items that i sell that can only be sourced from Regions outside of The Forge (the home of Jita).

I used to have these items couriered directly to the trading location to sell but that has proved to be tedious over time.

Therefore, i now have the items couriered to Jita and stored.  When a trade location needs one of these items to be sold i can then courier them from Jita - a much easier process to handle.

In effect this means i am couriering these items twice - once to Jita and once to the trade location.  Therefore, i add the additional courier cost to the Sale's price.

I also hold some BPOs + minerals + other items in inventory.

All that comes to around 130bn.

Furthermore, i am buying Skill Extractors all the time and i hold Large Skill Injectors for sale.  Currently, these come to around 200bn.

And finally, the old characters i logged back into came with around 110bn of items in their hangers.  I should start dealing with this to turn it into ISK.

What it means is that items in Hangers used to be 20bn but is now 439bn.

Buy Orders

Buy Orders have varied over time and peaked at around 80bn as i was also buying Skill Extractors.  However, i now have enough Skill Extractors for a few months so i have slowed down and so the Buy Orders now 56bn.

Once i get a grip, Buy Orders will also increase as i ramp up the Station Trading in Jita.

Currently Buy Orders sit at 56bn which is part Skill Extractor Buy Orders and Jita Buy Orders to station trade items.

ISK

I have 207bn spare ISK kicking around.

For the last 12 months the average ISK in wallets has been over 100bn compared to around 50bn before this.

The reason for his is purely real life being busy and so not having the time to make sure everything is invested.

It feels a waste - i should have as much as i can invested.  I have Plex ready for any NES deals that come along.

Assets not being used to create wealth

I really need to get a grip, if i add up inventory and cash then i get to over 600bn isk.  These are items that are not trying to be turned to cash via sell orders.

Some of it is part of Skill Farming as i stated above and some is to make my business more efficient.  Perhaps that is all to the good but it feels a right drag on my wealth creation potential.

2 trillion wealth

Before i got to 1 trillion wealth, 2 trillion was the next aim.

But, it just got boring watching my wealth rise so i set myself the task of giving everything above 1 trillion away.

However, my wealth is now 2 trillion despite giving away 323bn and taking a provision of 324 bn.  If neither of these things had been done then my current wealth would be 2.9 trillion isk.

Current Wealth

Current wealth is 2.212 trillion ISK made up from:

• Plex held as an investment 112bn ISK
• Items in hanger for sale 439bn ISK
• Items in hanger for use in business 11bn ISK
• Omega brought forward 0bn ISK
• Buy orders on the market 56bn ISK
• items for sale 1.73 trillion ISK

• less a 20% provision 347bn ISK*

• ISK in wallet 207bn ISK

When i add up my wealth, I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to ISK or are used to generate isk that can be readily resold back onto the market.  Any ships or skills or fittings etc i buy are counted as expenses in that month.  The only exception to this rule is Blueprint Originals i use for manufacturing.  They are held at cost.

* I take a 20% provision against the items I am selling.  Eve calculates wealth by adding up the value of the sell orders hence it is possible to increase your wealth by buying an item for 100m ISK and putting a sell order for 120m ISK (in this case your wealth would increase by 20m ISK).  For me, I want my wealth to be calculated at cost.  I know that the value of my sell orders will likely fall over time as I update my orders downwards as competition reduces their prices before my items are sold.  Hence the 20% provision is my best guess as to what the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.  In an ideal world I would value my sell orders at the value which I bought the items for.