Activision Blizzard earned $1.8 billion in three months. The main drivers of sales are Call of Duty and Sekiro

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
At the same time, the company’s management is still very pleased with the results of the quarter.

The fact is that the final consolidated* revenue turned out to be much more (by $ 110 million) than predicted.

* Speaking of net revenue, Activision Blizzard shares two types of reporting. The first one is consolidated. It includes both the money actually received by the company in this quarter, and deferred payments that have not yet been received into its account. The second reporting takes into account only actual receipts.

The reports differ significantly from each other (for example, according to the actual, Activision Blizzard’s earnings were not $1.8 billion, but $1.19 billion). Here and below we indicate only consolidated revenue. At the same time, the company’s management reports to investors for actual receipts.

Financial Details

Of the announced revenue of $1.8 billion, about $1.39 billion came from digital sales. Specifically, the company earned $0.8 billion from in-game payments.

Activision brought the most money to the company during the quarter ($763 million). Least of all — Blizzard ($ 461 million). The financial indicators of all the “daughters” have fallen. And King, too ($526 million).

Consolidated revenue of Activision Blizzard divisions, segmented by distribution channels (Q1 2019)
The biggest money, as a year earlier, companies bring sales from consoles ($ 677 million).

Here the main driver is the Call of Duty series. Mobile is in second place in terms of sales among platforms ($531 million). Here the main cash register is brought by games of the Candy Crush series. The PC platform is the main one for all Blizzard products — the least profitable for the entire company ($499 million).

Consolidated revenue of Activision Blizzard divisions, segmented by platform (Q1 2019)
The main market for the company’s games is America.

Of the $1.8 billion earned in the quarter, they account for $0.9 billion. It is curious that in second place is not the Asia—Pacific region, but the EBWA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa).

Consolidated revenue of Activision Blizzard divisions, segmented by region (Q1 2019)Major quarterly successes (products)

Both in its financial statements and as part of the conference call, the management of the gaming company identifies three products that allowed it to earn more than planned in the first quarter: Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Sekiro and Candy Crush Friends Saga.

• The Call of Duty game generated a large cash register for the company with the help of micropayments.
• The Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice project, which sold 2 million copies in the first 10 days of sales, worked much better than expected.
• The new “three-in-a-row” Candy Crush Friends Saga has already shown a positive ROI on release and today attracts not only old fans of the series, but also a new audience.

At the same time, the management of the concern tries not to talk much about Blizzard. The division’s revenue, profit and audience are falling. However, the president and chief operating officer of Activision Blizzard, Coddy Johnson, assures that these are temporary problems and after the new management is able to establish regular updates, the situation will improve.

The audience of the company’s games

Speaking of the audience. Activision Blizzard shared that the total monthly number of users of the company’s products is 345 million. These figures are distributed among the divisions as follows:

• Activision — 41 million;
• Blizzard — 32 million;
• King — 272 million .

The average time spent in the company’s games in the first quarter was 50 minutes. There was also a record average time spent in Candy Crush series games — 38 minutes.

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By the way, as part of the ongoing massive cuts in the financial statements, you can really see serious changes concerning those areas that Activision Blizzard is cleaning.

For example, compared to last year, expenses under the article “Operating and distribution of games” decreased by $20 million, administrative expenses decreased by the same amount. As for the “Sales and marketing” column, it generally decreased by $40 million.

Also on the topic:

• Activision Blizzard to lay off 800 employeesActivision Blizzard ended the year with record revenue