Games Workshop has received a £7.8m refund from the US administration after the Supreme Court ruled Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs to be illegal, the company said in another positive trading update.

The Warhammer maker told investors it had initially paid US customs £12m to keep trading across the Atlantic, a significant hit to its balance sheet. It has since recovered £7.8m of those charges after the US Supreme Court deemed the tariffs illegal, the company said on Tuesday.

The group now expects to bear about £13m in tariff costs over the next full year, reflecting replacement import duties introduced by Trump after the ruling. For a business that sells a large share of its highly international hobby product range into the US, those charges are a reminder that trade policy can affect even strong consumer brands through shipping and customs, not just through demand.

“I thought this would be drama free, how wrong I was,” the company told investors in its full-year trading update. It added: “The continuous hard work on efficiency gains to improve our gross margin has continued. Unlike some companies, we do not consider tariffs as an exceptional item, but rather part of the uncertainty of operating globally.”

Despite the uncertainty over US trade policy, one of Games Workshop’s largest export markets, the FTSE 100 figurine maker posted another year of double-digit sales and profit growth.

‘Exciting times’ for Games Workshop

Revenue rose 11 per cent to £626.8m in the 12 months to June, while profit at the Nottingham-headquartered group increased by more than 16 per cent. The company said its core miniature and retail divisions continued to grow steadily. However, its smaller licensing arm fell 37 per cent.

Games Workshop declared a dividend of 485p a share, down from 520p per share the previous year.

“Games Workshop and the Warhammer hobby are in great shape,” said Kevin Rountree, chief executive of Games Workshop, adding that it was “exciting times” for the company.

The firm’s tariff bill highlights the pressures British exporters have faced since Donald Trump’s re-election last year. British exporters were hit with a 10 per cent tariff on almost all trade with the US, which, despite its impact on Games Workshop, remained lower than some countries. For listed exporters, the issue now is not just the immediate cost of selling into America, but the added uncertainty of how quickly trade rules can change and how those costs flow through reported profits.

The Supreme Court ruled in February that the first wave of blanket trade duties, which Trump pushed through using an arcane national emergency pretext, was illegal. In a rare move, the judgment forced the US administration to issue refunds to companies that had paid large tariff bills.

Trump has since reintroduced a fresh round of permanent tariffs on dozens of the US’s trading partners, including a 10 per cent duty on all UK exports to America.

Analysts at Peel Hunt said Games Workshop had “delivered a strong performance” against a tough comparative period. They reiterated their ‘buy’ rating for the group, which they said had enjoyed an impressive year.

Shares fell 2.5 per cent at market open, which analysts attributed to the company’s forecast tariff costs for next year and lower licensing revenue.

“It’s also worth noting the dip in licensing doesn’t look like a loss of interest in Games Workshop’s intellectual property,” said Duncan Ferris, analyst at Freetrade. “There has been continued progress in its partnership with Amazon to create films and television set in the Warhammer universe. The attachment of director Mike Flanagan shows tangible progress, but it sounds like we could be waiting some time before tabletop action hits the big or small screen.”