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Activision Surges After Crushing Second Quarter Estimates

For Q3, analysts tracked by S&P Capital IQ have the company generating $865.99 million in revenue and $0.14 a share in adjusted profit. On a non-GAAP basis, net revenues from digital sales were $611 million, a year-over-year increase of 27 percent. It’s also releasing the next expansion for Hearthstone in the third quarter, with a $50 preorder package – something new for the card battler. The company plans to release a new version of the game later this year.

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“Our audience size and the total amount of time people spend with our franchises continue to grow”, he continued.

Video game publisher, Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI) stated on Tuesday that its second-quarter net earnings of $212 million or $0.29 per share as compared with $204 million or $0.28 per share previous year.

Even with the drop in subscriptions for World of Warcraft, overall, the results of the quarter are better than what was expected of Activision Blizzard. Including toys and accessories, Skylanders was the No. 1 console title and kids console title year to date, and outsold the No. 1 action figure line in North America and Europe. Season pass, downloadable content, and micro-transaction offerings have helped drive increased engagement and monetization.

Revenue from the “Call of Duty” franchise was powered by gross sales of its “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare” recreation, which was launched on November. four.

– Activision Publishing and Bungie released Destiny’s highly acclaimed second expansion, House of Wolves, which had a strong attach rate and engagement. The shares have underperformed the S&P 500 by 2.62% during the past week but Activision Blizzard, Inc (NASDAQ:ATVI) has outperformed the index in 4 weeks by 3.36%.

One of the company’s other popular games, World of Warcraft, did see a fall in subscribers to 5.6 million, its lowest total since 2006. Given that the MMO megaton has been known to go far longer than a year without a new expansion, that’s pretty huge.

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In September 2010, World of Warcraft subscribers were numbered at 12 million during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Blizzard announced in May that Heroes of the Storm had been added to the Road to BlizzCon program, and major tournaments are already underway globally. The company did not make any share repurchases during the second quarter under its $750 million share repurchase authorization ending February 2017. In a follow-up financial call, the blue giant was jollier than you might expect, given that Diablo, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm upped their overall revenue despite WoW’s woeful drop.

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