Activision-Blizzard Profits $503m in Q1 2011, Raises Projections - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 09 May 2011 / 6,069 Views
Activision-Blizzard results for the March 2011 quarter have arrived. The company earned $1.449b ($1.449 billion) in revenue for the quarter, up from $1.308b in the previous March quarter. Profit also leaped to $503m ($503 million) for the March 2011 quarter, up from $381m in the March 2010 quarter. Activision-Blizzard had forecast revenue of $1.28b in the March 2011 quarter with profits of $336m - so the company easily beat both projections. Previously, Activision-Blizzard had projected revenue of $3.95b for January to December 2011, with profit of $672m for the year. The company now expects $4.05b in revenue for the year with profits of 61 cents per share - or about $732m. During the April to June 2011 quarter, Activision-Blizzard revenues are forecast to reach $985m, with profit at 19 cents per share, or $228m.
Looking to the future, Activision-Blizzard "plans to allocate the majority of its resources and focus toward opportunities which it expects will afford it the greatest competitive advantages and the greatest potential for best-in-class quality, high-margin digital growth, and long-term success. These opportunities include new content for Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo franchises, and its next-generation MMO; robust investment in forthcoming Call of Duty titles, including a micro-transaction game for China; the development of a best-in-class digital platform surrounding the Call of Duty franchise; a new property from Bungie; and Skylander's Spyro's Adventure,™ an innovative new universe bringing the world of toys, video games and the Internet together in an unprecedented way. These investments should better position Activision Blizzard for long-term growth and enable it to continue expanding its position as the largest digital publisher."
Regarding the recent strong set of results for the quarter, Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision-Blizzard said "with over $1.4 billion of GAAP net revenues and $0.42 of GAAP EPS our record first-quarter performance was driven by digital sales and the continued strength of Activision Publishing's Call of Duty® and Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft® franchises. Digital content continues to represent a significant portion of our revenues and increased by about $100 million year over year, enabling us to deliver record first-quarter operating margins and earnings per share. The Call of Duty: Black Ops® First Strike content pack shattered Xbox LIVE® launch records, surpassing 1.4 million downloads in the first 24 hours alone according to Microsoft and Blizzard's Battle.net® service continues to grow its service offerings. To date, Call of Duty: Black Ops players have logged more than 1.2 billion online hours of online gameplay, according to internal estimates."
The company also listed several higlights for the quarter:
- During the first quarter, Call of Duty: Black Ops became the best-selling game of all time in dollars across the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and the PC in the U.S. and Europe and was also the #1 game in the U.S. and Europe for the quarter.(NPD, GFK, ChartTrack)
- For the first quarter, Activision Blizzard had three top-10 PC titles with Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft: Cataclysm™ and StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty™ and Activision Publishing's Call of Duty: Black Ops.(NPD, GFk, Charttrack)
- Total unique online gamers playing Call of Duty: Black Ops were more than 33% greater than the total unique online gamers who played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare® 2 for the first five months after each game's release.(Microsoft, Sony, Activision estimates)
- During the quarter, digital downloads of the Call of Duty: Black Ops First Strike content pack were more than 20% higher than digital downloads of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Pack during the comparable period in 2010.(Microsoft, Sony, Activision estimates)
- Since Call of Duty: Black Ops First Strike launched on February 1, players have spent an average of 58 minutes per day playing online, exceeding the 55 minutes the average user spends per day on Facebook.(Digital Buzz Blog, Activision, Microsoft, and Sony)
- As of March 31, 2011, Activision Blizzard had purchased approximately 31 million shares of its common stock, for approximately $344 million, under the $1.5 billion stock repurchase program authorized by its Board of Directors on February 9, 2011.
- Activision Blizzard will pay a cash dividend of $0.165 per common share on May 11, 2011 to shareholders of record as of March 16, 2011. The dividend represents a 10% increase over the dividend that was issued in 2010.
- For the first quarter, GAAP net revenues from digital channels increased 30% year over year, accounting for 30% of the company's total net revenues. On a non-GAAP basis, net revenues from digital channels also increased 30% year over year, accounting for more than 50% of total net revenues.
Activision-Blizzard also provided a look at how its revenues were split by platform for the March 2011 quarter.
- Including downloadable content sold on consoles, Activision's largest platforms by revenue in the March 2011 quarter were the X360 at $396m (27% of total revenue), Online Subcriptions (MMOs) at $395m (27% of total revenue), PS3 at $342m (24% of total revenue), PC / Other at $124m (9% of total revenue), Wii at $82m (6% of total revenue), Distribution at $75m (5% of total revenue) and DS at $22 (2% of total revenue). The remaining revenue, 1% was split between PSP, PS2, and 3DS. PSP revenue was $5m, with 3DS and PS2 each at $4m for the quarter.
- Compared to the previous March quarter, revenue from online subcriptions increased by $85m, followed by PC / Other revenue which increased by $75m, and then PS3 which grew by $38m, X360 at $12m, with 3DS and distribution revenue growth at $4m. Wii revenue shrank by $54m, DS revenue shrank by $12m, PS2 revenue shrank by $11m, and PSP revenue remained flat.
- Activision-Blizzard revenue also grew in each region compared to the March 2010 quarter. March 2011 quarter revenue jumped to $748m in North America from $703m. European revenue grew to $594m from $524m, and Asia Pacific Revenue grew to $107m from $81m.
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Wow, you guys know what this means? Act-Blizz is currently winning this quarter! Didn't think they would manage to make more than Nintty or MEDD
Blizzard loves to innovate, but not at the cost of what's right. When SC2 was coming out, my friends and I had one big fear - that SC2 wouldn't be enough like SC1. Then I read reviews complaining that SC2 was just SC1 with some new units and a modern engine. Those "complaints" made me giddy. That's exactly what I, and most real SC fans, wanted. Innovation is important, but never for innovation's sake. There must be a reason.
Blizzard loves to innovate, but not at the cost of what's right. When SC2 was coming out, my friends and I had one big fear - that SC2 wouldn't be enough like SC1. Then I read reviews complaining that SC2 was just SC1 with some new units and a modern engine. Those "complaints" made me giddy. That's exactly what I, and most real SC fans, wanted. Innovation is important, but never for innovation's sake. There must be a reason.
I dunno reviente, starcraft 2 is pretty different than sc1. Lots of things have changed. The way the game is played, how you get to games, battlenet is completely different too, as well as how they sell the game (with multiplayer only versions and subscriptions, and options to forgo the subscription etc etc) Plus, they have a new MMO coming out, and Diablo looks to be extremely different than before. But that's just blizzard I'm talking about...
they are doin a new IP, there doin a new MMO called titan
Somehow I feel this success deters them from trying out new IPs or innovating with their existing franshises.
No big surprise, most of those numbers were expected as a significant portion of the revenue is defered revenue from the previous quarter...
