Electronic Arts had a financial call yesterday. Unfortunately there weren’t much news about how SWTOR are doing, other then early indications for SWTOR F2P transition were positive.
In other news coming out of the financial call, Electronic Arts said its loss for the third quarter narrowed from a year ago, mostly on lower expenses. Adjusted profit, which excludes special items, beat estimates by a penny, although revenues fell short of expectations. Moving ahead, the company detailed its outlook for the fourth quarter and revised its full year guidance.
Electronic Arts third-quarter loss narrowed to $45 million or $0.15 per share from $205 million or $0.62 per share last year.
Excluding items, earnings dropped to $0.57 per share from $0.99 per share last year. On average, 26 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.56 per share for the quarter. Analysts’ estimates typically exclude special items.
Revenues for the third quarter dropped to $922 million from $1.06 billion last year. Revenues on a non-GAAP basis aggregated $1.18 billion, down from $1.65 billion a year ago. Analysts estimated revenues $1.29 billion for the quarter.
The video-game maker, like all its peers, is struggling to keep up with change in consumer taste, as users switch to low-ticket mobile and computer social games from the high-price console games.
EA said it sold 12 million units of its top-selling game FIFA 13 through the third quarter, a 23 percent increase compared to FIFA 12 last year. FIFA 13 digital revenue topped $100 million in the quarter, a 98 percent improvement.
Financial Chief Blake Jorgensen said, “We delivered on non-GAAP EPS by driving high-margin digital revenue and through disciplined expense management.”
Digital revenues improved to $321 million from $274 million last year, while publishing packaged goods sales dropped to $568 million from $738 million last year. Distribution packaged goods sales dropped to $33 million from $49 million last year.
