Electronic Arts Inc. Q2 FY18 Earnings Release Sends Shares Lower

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Electronic Arts Q2 FY18 earnings were released after closing bell tonight, and the company posted GAAP losses of 7 cents per share on $959 million in net revenue. In last year’s third quarter, the game maker reported losses of 13 cents per share on $898 million in net revenue.

Electronic Arts no longer reports certain non-GAAP measures, which has been throwing some of the estimates off during the adjustment year. The company also renamed its “net sales” operating metric to “net bookings.”

Electronic Arts Q2 FY18 earnings

Digital net revenues rose to $689 million from $566 million last year, while packaged goods and other net revenue fell to $270 million from $332 million last year. Met bookings rose to $1.18 billion from $1.1 billion last year. Digital net bookings for the trailing 12 months grew 26% year over year, reaching $3.24 billion to contribute 63% of total net bookings. In the year-ago quarter, Electronic Arts’ digital net revenues were $2.5 billion on a trailing 12 months basis. Management noted strength in their sports titles.

“We saw a notable shift to digital in our sports titles and remarkable growth in Ultimate Team,” said Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said in a statement in the Electronic Arts Q2 FY18 earnings release. “Our sports titles have once again shown their value in delivering a stable and dependable performance. This quarter demonstrates how they can drive our business and offers a window into how our games will evolve over the months and years to come.”

Electronic Arts said over half of Madden NFL 18 players played through the “Longshot” story mode, and the player base for Madden Ultimate Team is up 25% year over year. The number of unique players for FIFA Mobile surpassed 113 million, while the Battlefield 1 player base surpassed 23.5 million. PC players of The Sims 4 grew by more than 40% year over year.

Electronic Arts repurchased 1.3 million shares for $153 million during the second fiscal quarter.

Electronic Arts announces guidance

For fiscal 2018, Electronic Arts expects about $5.075 billion in net revenue and about a $75 million change in deferred net revenue. The company expects diluted earnings to be about $3.63 per share and net bookings to be around $5.15 billion, which is a bit light of consensus at $5.2 billion.

For the third fiscal quarter, the game maker expects about $1.135 billion in net revenue and a change of about $865 million in deferred net revenue. It projects losses of about 21 cents per share and net bookings of about $2 billion. For the company’s third fiscal quarter, the consensus currently stands at earnings of 6 cents per share on $2.05 billion in revenue.

Following the Electronic Arts Q2 FY18 earnings release, the company’s stock declined by as much as 3.34% to $115.60 in after-hours trades.

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