It has been announced that the retailer has reached an agreement with its suppliers and its banks, as the future looks a lot rosier for the retailer. According to a report on The Guardian HMV is planning on giving 2.5 percent of its equity to its major suppliers, which will be in the form of warrants. Other parts of the deal are to remain secret, and the company believes its financial situation will be a lot healthier over the next three years.

HMV is the last music and DVD retailer left in the country that has a nationwide presence, and for it to collapse would also be damaging to the movie companies and record labels. Previously shares in the retailer had dropped 90 percent last year, but doubled in value following the news. It is now thought all the risk will now be with the suppliers.

The new deal is thought to include the likes of EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music and Pictures, Warner Brothers, and Disney. Games and consoles suppliers are not thought to be part of the deal, and it has been mentioned previously that the retailer may scale down its offerings of the sector.

There may be now a bigger focus on its movie and music offerings and stores are expected to increase their vinyl offers. The company is also likely to continue to offer the likes of iPads and headphones in its technology push.

HMV have also managed to get its banking covenants relaxed, which comes a few months after they were last relaxed. Chief executive Simon Fox believes the group’s debts will reach £180 million by April, but going on current trading feels this can be halved within three years. They could also raise around £60 million with the sale of its Live business.

Do you hope HMV will survive?

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The retailer has recently reported an 8.2 percent drop in like-for-like sales of video games in the busy five week lead up to Christmas, and according to The Telegraph the company is considering reducing its video game business. It’s not all doom and gloom for the retailer though as it saw a small improvement on the final nine weeks of 2011, with sales falling 9.8 percent.

HMV did lose 16 percent of the video games market in the UK with competition from online stores and supermarkets. This has led the company to consider how much room it dedicates to the sector in its brick and mortar stores. Chief Executive Simon Fox is considering only selling the big new titles and not stocking older software.

The company currently has £160 million of debt as well as falling sales, but a recent decision to stock larger levels of technology seems to be paying dividends. These types of sales leaped 51 percent at stores that had been open for a year or more for the five weeks after 144 stores were refitted. This was to promote sales of the likes of tablet PCs and headphones, and currently accounts for 12 percent of total sales with headphones taking fifty percent of that.

It is hoped that technology sales will continue to grow during the next year, and by enough to counteract falling sales of DVDs and games. HMV is not the only company seeing falling sales of boxed video games though, as the industry as a whole saw a drop of seven percent last year across the board.

Many gamers wait to get a new title so the price may drop saving them money, but less profit for the retailer. Reuters is reporting rival retailer the GAME Group has warned it may break the terms of its loans after reporting low trading over Christmas. Sales across its stores where worse than the retailer had estimated before Christmas.

Sales over the last eight weeks had dropped 14.7 percent compared to a year ago, and 10 percent for stores open a year during the 49 weeks to January 7th. It also lost 13.1 percent of the overall games market. Do you use either HMV or GAME to purchase your new games?

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The tech and music retailer has admitted it faces “material uncertainties” after it reported losses of £36.4 million, and according to The Guardian is thinking of selling off some of its assets. These include live venues such as the Hammersmith Apollo as the game and DVD retailer saw sales for the 26 weeks to the end of October fall 17.6 percent.

This resulted in the retailer reporting a bigger loss than the £27.4 million it saw for the same time last year. Sales have continued to fall in the run up to Christmas with some suppliers having doubts about the retailer’s viability, with a reported drop in sales for the seven weeks up to December 17th of 13 percent.

Philip Dorgan retail analyst of Panmure, feels the group is currently “in a very difficult position“, with the coming days really important to stop the financial situation getting worse. This has seen shares lose almost 90 of their value in the last year, and only values the business at £16.4 million now.

The company currently has net debts of £163.7 million with some suggesting a rights issue is needed to keep the retailer trading. HMV has commented that it has enough resources to continue for the “foreseeable future“. It is believed the group’s directors are having ‘constructive’ talks with the group’s banks.

HMV currently has 249 stores with a further nine Fopp outlets, and the HMV Live arm that runs its live venues. But HMV Live could now be sold off to keep the business going and comes after it recently sold off the Waterstone book chain.

Do you still purchase items from HMV?

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The first Techshop store was opened in the One New Change mall in London. It is a spin-off store from HMV that will focus less on CDs, Blu-rays, DVDs and games and more on technology and consumer electronics products such as speaker docks, iPods, iPads, other tablets and more. The company will be hoping for success in the run up to Christmas and will also open up another Techshop during the build-up.

Evidence that this new format of stores will comes from the success the company had with another similar trial that they did which extended the availability of their range of technology products with their HMV Fast Forward stores. That’s according to the last HMV trading update on the September 9th. As The Inquirer reports, whether or not the HMV Techshop will succeed is yet to be established.

HMV have been forced into taking this kind of action, despite not knowing whether it will succeed or not, as their overall sales had declined 15% for the last quarter. If they were to carry on the way they are an inevitable fate awaits them, similar to what happened to their former competitors Virgin Megastores. The future is looking tough for the company who has for many years succeeded in what they know best but now face entering new territory which already has established retailers.

Do you think the HMV Techshop will be able to get the company out of their slump?

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According to a recent article by Kev J. over at electronictheatre.co.uk, the RE/PLAY – which is the branding that’s associated with the company’s trade-in scheme for video game products and video games – app enables users to check out just how much their products are worth without having to go into store.

HMV’s trade-in scheme enables users to trade their unwanted games against anything that they sell, or to load their credit onto a gift card which they can then use at a later date. However, if there’s nothing they really want to buy, they can just exchange the old games for cash.

With the newly released RE/PLAY application, gamers can find out exactly how much credit or cash their nearest HMV store will give them for their unwanted titles. All users have to do is scan the barcode or search for the video game by title.

Are you thinking of trading in any of your games? If so, do you like the idea of the RE/PLAY app?

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The midnight launch takes place on March 25 (the night of March 24), with Nintendo and HMV both giving out goodies in a special launch-night pack to all enthusiastic fans. The pack contains a whole bunch of Nintendo related rewards, which includes a space blanket to keep you warm whilst queuing, a limited edition launch t-shirt and an Official Nintendo Magazine, which focuses on the Nintendo 3DS launch.

Furthermore, those of you who are lucky enough to get your hands on the first 500 consoles will also be treated to the choice of a free 3DS game of your choosing.

If that wasn’t enough, there will also be events taking place such as gamers pitting themselves against other gamers in official Street Fighter IV and Pro Evolution Soccer head-to-head battles.

If you are not able to get to HMV Oxford Street, Nintendo are also doing launch nights in colaboration with other stores around the UK. You can see the entire list here via HMV.

Exciting stuff for Nintendo fans. Will the entertainment, rewards, prizes and the fact that the 3DS will finally be available be enough to attend the official launch night? What are you looking forward to the most?

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As reported from Pocket-Lint, HMV will be offering the option for gamers to pay £1 extra per year for added insurance on their £40-50 retail copies.

For this measly sum, HMV will replace any discs that are lost, damaged or stolen – although the retailer did not go into any specifics on this. A replacement disc everytime it gets scratched seems too good to be true surely?

Anyway, here is what a HMV spokesman had to say on the new initiative: “At the moment the idea is just a trial, by way of affording further value and consumer protection to our customers. It follows a similar initiative in our Canadian chain, and we’ll obviously be monitoring the response of our customers in order to decide if we make this a regular part of our offer or not”.

So readers, just how many of you are willing to pay £1 for ‘added’ protection? We will try and bring you the exact terns and conditions of the offer.

[Read]

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