Despite turbulent acquisition reviews, class action lawsuits and unionization demands, Activision Blizzard still managed to beat investor expectations for its Q3 2022 earnings report.
Sharing its earnings results with investors yesterday, Activision Blizzard reported that for its Q3 2022, the company brought in an ESP of $0.55 a share when expectations were saddled around $0.42 share for the quarter.
Furthermore, Activision Blizzard’s revenues also skimped past expectations set at $1.7 billion for the quarter to $1.78 billion year-over-year.
For Q3 2022, Activision’s King mobile gaming publishing studio marked an 8 percent increase in bookings the company is attributing to longevity of the Candy Crush franchise leading to its double-digit percentage increase year-over year.
As for the darling title of the company, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II “has set new records for our largest franchise, becoming the fastest premium Call of Duty release to cross $1 billion in sell-through. Sales have been robust across all platforms, including on PC, where unit sell-through to date is approximately twice the level of recent strong titles in the series. Modern Warfare II has set new franchise engagement records for a premium Call of Duty release, with hours played in the first 10 days more than 40% above the prior franchise record.”
Activision did also report that its monthly active users were down from 390 million a year ago to 368 for 2022 as well as generating $257 million in operating cash flow for the quarter as opposed to $521 million a year ago.
While reporting slightly better than expected earnings for the quarter, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick did a bit of placating for investors concerned with the Microsoft buyout,
We look forward to continuing to release epic entertainment in service of our global community of players as a part of Microsoft, one of the world’s most admired companies. We continue to expect that our transaction will close in Microsoft’s current fiscal year ending June 2023.
Kotick and Microsoft face a relatively uphill battle to cross the $68.2 billion dollar acquisition finish line as both UK and EU regulators signal cynical concerns over the state of the market if Activision and Microsoft merge.
