Rehashes for the win. It looks like Electronic Arts could be cashing in big in their second quarter results thanks to FIFA 13 and Madden NFL 13. According to an early estimate report by Sterne Agee's CFA Arvind Bhatia, EA could beat estimated financial forecasts of the second quarter, mostly due to their sports titles.
As noted in the report courtesy of BlueMatrix, EA is expected to take home an impressive $1.08 billion in revenue for the second quarter of the fiscal year, which would be up from the previous year's second quarter of $1.03 billion. That's an increase of about $50 million in revenue over last year. The increase is estimated to come from strong sales of FIFA 13, Madden NFL 13 and EA's foray into the digital distribution space. This is despite controversies surrounding select EA titles, including FIFA 12, NHL 12 and NHL 13.
Guidance reports are a little bit lower than the general consensus, however, and it's more than likely that EA will level out at about $1.05 billion in revenue, which is still up by about $20 million over the previous year's performance.
One thing worth noting from the report, however, was the full year estimates of EA, which kind of ties into what most gamers might be expecting from the company, with the report stating...
EA's guidance is quite back-end loaded already with F4Q (March) expected to represent 29% of full-year revenue compared to 23% in the year-ago quarter and 26% two years ago. With a weaker-than- expected start to recently launched title Medal of Honor: Warfighter and our belief that EA could lose market share this year as it lacks key drive titles until F4Q, we think full guidance could be at risk.
EA thought they could actually leverage their market share due to an expected wane in popularity from their arch-rival's top dog, Call of Duty. Last year EA's corporate communications director Jeff Brown had some harsh words for Activision's Eric Hirshberg, regarding Call of Duty, claiming that their annual rehash would only work for so long before it would die out and that they (EA) would usurp Activision's market share over the next couple of years, starting with Battlefield 3.
While Battlefield 3 definitely put EA up there alongside Call of Duty it wasn't enough to topple the giant. Given the lackluster effort behind Medal of Honor: Warfighter and the poor estimates associated with the brand, I imagine that Call of Duty: Black Ops II's only real competition will come from Microsoft's Halo 4 and Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed III.
EA's full earnings call will take place tomorrow on October 30th after the market closes. I imagine there will be some interesting news to come out of it, especially regarding their microtransaction model and digital distribution services.
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