Tuesday earnings report concerned how the company was dealing with accusations of gender inequality and harassment, results topped Wall Street estimates but full-year revenue and booking outlooks didn’t. While a lot of the spotlight on Activision Blizzard Inc.’s “However, the same data also suggests that gaming engagement stabilized in July, which is consistent with the guides we saw this week from ATVI/EA/TTWO/PLTK.”
“Twitch data also suggested a slowdown in gaming engagement in the second half of Q2,” Creutz wrote. The consensus from the week’s earnings was that videogame engagement had slowed down a bit, but reached a plateau and is expected to stay strong. Playtika shares had the best week, rising 13%. The Israel-based mobile game developer, which went public in January, is considered a top pick by Cowen’s Creutz as he said titles like “Bingo Blitz” and “Solitaire Grand Harvest” are showing stronger growth than anything in Zynga’s catalog. 0.29% swung to a profit versus its loss in the year-ago quarter - slight below Street estimates however - while revenue topped estimates. “ management indicated they saw a demand slowdown in the second half of the quarter,” Creutz said “This is entirely consistent with what we saw from Activision, Take-Two and EA, the former two of which also had uncharacteristically small beats, and while EA had a bigger beat, it was heavily driven by genuine unit upside surprise from a new launch title.” Cowen analyst Doug Creutz probably summed up the week the best in a note titled “We almost got through earnings season without a disappointment…almost.”
Mobile is the fastest growing segment in the nearly $200 billion videogame market, and results showed that with more outdoor options open, gamers will still have their phones on them, but confidence moving forward is not universal.Ĭaused a lot of the confusion with its Thursday report, faring the worst of the publishers as shares plunged more than 15% following a disappointing outlook and bookings in an otherwise decent earnings report.
The one area that still appears most unsettled is mobile games, as two of the biggest names in mobile games headed in different directions. While results were still strong, the forecasts for many of the companies caused consternation, as they showed at least a plateau for the videogame boom, and stocks as a whole fell.