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Activision-Blizzard Stocks Soar in Quarter 3 2016 - MMORPG.com News
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Activision-Blizzard Stocks Soar in Quarter 3 2016 - MMORPG.com News
Activision-Blizzard has had a banner quarter with non-GAAP earnings per share up 145% over the same quarter in 2015 and 58% over 2015 in overall non-GAAP revenue. The non-GAAP earnings for Q3 2016 is $1.57B as compared to $990M in 2015.
Comments
The $60 box price keeps the hackers away. Free shooters are breeding grounds for hackers, get caught, just make a new account and start all over. Not many are willing to do that with a $60 price tag everytime they are caught.
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
However what VentureBeat could have pointed out - which would have put the "impressive" rises they list - into perspective is that:
If a big company buys another big company you would have to be doing something seriously wrong not to report excellent year on year growth and "record" quarterly numbers. Basically you are comparing two companies worth of numbers with only one.
Prior to King being purchased there were worries that King was "stagnating". And worries that the $5.9 billion price tag (largely debt funded) was excessive. AB's earlier quarterly results this year did not dispel this idea, nor will this set of results as a result of this statement:
"King’s monthly active users of 394 million were down slightly this quarter." (Have to read the actual results to see more e.g. King: Revenues slightly down Q/Q and Y/Y)
Maybe the smaller companies will get the hint, and we'll get less f2p p2w crap. Probably not, since it's actually very difficult to make quality games and have good customer service, but one can hope.
Time to start throwing some money at their MOBA!!
Crazkanuk
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- Revenue in 2016 (so far) is 38.7% up compared to 2015.
- However expenses are also 60.8% up compared to 2015.
In the end that translates to smaller profit in the first 9 months than in 2015. And that's even with Overwatch releasing + Legion launching in Q3. Activision Blizzard can expect a pretty bad Q4 and much smaller profit than last year.
So yeah these records are pretty pointless, when it's only half the truth. Activision Blizzard's liabilities are also up to 9.6 billion and will likely exceed 10 billion till the end of the year (more than 3 billion in just a year). I wonder how come nobody is noticing that Activision Blizzard's profit has been going down for a few years now. They literally threw everything this year, and are still going down in profits compared to the previous years. Those "unlimited" marketing campaigns are really starting to show.
Hard to say, they pretty much spent more on everything:
- Marketing expenses nearly doubled (830mil - 86.5% increase)
- Product development (673mil - 48.6% increase)
- Distribution costs (620mil - 222.9% increase)
- General and administrative costs (486mil - 63.6% increase)
Etc.. They are already at 3.6 billion expenses in the first 9 months of 2016. Comparing that to the first 9 months of 2015 - 2.2 billion.
Sales and Marketing Expenses ! If you add something, at least do it correctly! Plus, this is for all 3 companies! Activision , Blizzard and King !
Anyway , what it got my attention is that Blizzard is actually making more money then Activision ! Wasn't the other way around 2-3 years ago ?
Reporter: What's behind Blizzard success, and how do you make your gamers happy?
Blizzard Boss: Making gamers happy is not my concern, making money.. yes!
And even Blizz don't always turn the risky projects into great successes, Heroes of the storm did not perform that good.
But yeah, Overwatch did indeed perform better then anyone including Blizzard even dreamed about. Heck, if anyone say they guessed 20M copies sold in this time I wont believe them.
Still, good games sell and the Overwatch team did an amazing job, anything with Blizz name sells some of the name and I think they would have sold 1-2M even if the game would have been terrible but this is beyond words.
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If you do like FPS games however... then yes, you probably are. :pleased:
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
King also made more money than Activision as well - this was not a small purchase. And the addition of King is the agent of change in all the overall numbers.
As you say - and as I said above - these comparisons are between old Activision-Blizzard and the new Activision-Blizzard+King. Revenue numbers, user engagement numbers, cost numbers. And no surprise that in their results AB focused on the sales type numbers!
And borrowing to fund the $5.9 billion purchase of King has increased "interest" costs. It is all structured though with some debt pushed out to the future of course.
And reducing the debt going forward is what will matter. Will the extra revenue from King over time be more than the extra interest charges over time. Remember interest paid can be reduced by extending the loan hence its the long term picture that matters.
Now if King's performs "as expected" - i.e. grows - going forward then price paid will look less expensive; if it shrinks the reverse is true.
Really?
I am not saying he doesn't but really?
How hard is it just to boldly make up lies and lay them on the internet like a nice warm blanket?
Anyone can say anything, without material proof words are just air.
I would be more interested to hear about HOW MUCH stock he has. 10 shares is good for fun and games but worth nothing. Now if the guys has 50 lots or something and got lucky enough to buy in low he does indeed have a winner winner here even then its meaningless other than to be a greedy bragging asshole. then again I would also want proof or feel compelled just to dismiss it as more internet lies manifested from a greedy need to be noticed all the time.