Just days after Blizzcon 2019 and a month after the company’s latest controversy, Activision-Blizzard is making headlines again. Despite an overall favourable outlook for the company in its Q3 report, its stock closed 25 cents cheaper than it was selling on Thursday night.
One of the possible reasons behind the market change is that revenue was down for the second quarter in a row. Net revenue was down 15% to $1.28 billion and net bookings were down 27% to $1.21 billion during Q3 of 2019.
Another potential came in the form of Activision’s user metrics found within the report. It indicates that across all of Blizzard’s games, they are down 8% in monthly-active users from what they had in Q3 2018. Activision specific games saw an even greater drop of 22%.
The silver lining in the report, however, is that the company is still turning a profit, with earnings sitting at $0.26 per share. While still profitable for investors, this shows a 24% drop from earnings in Q3 2018.
While most analysts on Wall Street don’t see any reason to fear the contents of the report in the long-term, gaming communities hark a different song.
Top comments on the most active Reddit discussions show fans losing their connection to the publisher. Many feel that the games coming out of the company are lacklustre in comparison to years passed, and feel like the contents of the report are the allegorical “writing on the wall”.
Below the highly upvoted sentiments come threads discussing some of the more positive aspects of the Q3 report. These fans believe that the speed at which Call of Duty: Mobile has been adopted by new users and their latest release, Modern Warfare, seeing better initial sales than the last title in the franchise are signs that the company will continue to push forward despite the vocal detractors.
Activision-Blizzard will post its Q4 earnings report in early February 2020.
