image
Technology - Electronic Gaming & Multimedia - NASDAQ - US
$ 161.36
-1.68 %
$ 42.3 B
Market Cap
41.27
P/E
EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT
EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT 2023 - Q3
image
Company Representatives

Andrew Wilson - Chief Executive Officer Chris Suh - Chief Financial Officer Laura Miele - Chief Operating Officer Chris Evenden - Vice President, Investor Relations.

Operator

Hello! And thank you for standing by. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Electronic Arts, Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.

After the speakers remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Chris Evenden, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead. .

Chris Evenden

Our Q4 fiscal 2023 earnings call is scheduled for Tuesday, May 9. As a reminder, we post the schedule of our entire fiscal year of upcoming earnings calls on our IR website. This presentation and our comments include forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company.

Actual events and results may differ materially from our expectations. We refer you to our most recent Form 10-Q for a discussion of risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. Electronic Arts makes these statements as of today, January 31, 2023, and disclaims any duty to update them.

During this call, the financial metrics, with the exception of free cash flow, will be presented on a GAAP basis. All comparisons made in the course of this call are against the same period in the prior year unless otherwise stated. Now, I’ll turn the call over to Andrew..

Andrew Wilson Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Survivor’s launch date to April 28. The game is a creative and innovative leap forward, going further into the experience of a Jedi, delivering more content, more exploration, and more fun.

Anticipation for the game is incredibly high and the Respawn team known around the world for delivering top quality entertainment is focusing on the final polish stage to enhance performance, stability, and most importantly, the player experience.

Giving the team these extra few weeks to deliver the best experience for our players will not only result in a higher quality game, but puts us in a best position to grow the long-term value of the franchise. We’re also making strategic decisions around two mobile titles. Apex Legends Mobile won game of the year on both iPhone and Android.

Despite this strong start, the ongoing experience was not going to meet the expectations of our players. After months of working with our development partner, we have made the mutual decision to sunset this version of the game. We’ve learned a great deal and have plans to reimagine a connected Apex mobile experience in the future.

It is through these learnings, combined with a clear franchise strategy, that we’ve also made the decision to stop the development of the current Battlefield mobile title. We know our community values a deeply connected ecosystem and our team is focused on delivering the best, unified cross-platform experience for our players.

Everything we do is designed to inspire the world to play. As a company, our teams have demonstrated that with a culture of creativity, innovation and resilience, we can grow through transformative periods of change and lead the future of entertainment.

As we look ahead, our teams remain focused and disciplined as we reshape our investments toward a future of accelerated content generation, increased direct player engagement and deeply connected ecosystems to bring more people into our global community.

We are taking strategic actions to evaluate our cost structure as we navigate through the current macro environment. With our exceptional talent, our broad portfolio of amazing IP, and massive player network, we remain committed to delivering long-term value in our business. Now, I’ll turn the call over to Chris..

Chris Suh

Survivor, plus additional titles we will announce in due course. Excluding the impact of FX, we expect mid-single digit growth on net bookings and low double-digit growth on underlying profitability. If rates remain unchanged from today, that would equate to mid-single digit growth for both top and bottom line.

Our business is anchored by incredible brands, evergreen live services, high quality games, and a growing player network. We will be focused on our investments as we build and scale our business, all while delivering amazing experiences for our players. Now, I’ll hand the call back to Andrew..

Andrew Wilson Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Chris. We drove incredible engagement and delivered high quality experiences in the quarter. As Chris shared, we are being disciplined and focused on what we can control to fuel our biggest growth opportunities.

We are confident in our vision for the future, and with our exceptional talent, proven IP, and growing player network, EA is operating from a position of strength. Our audiences have an insatiable appetite for interactive entertainment and are engaging more deeply with the experiences they love.

The future of entertainment is interactive, and no team is better equipped than EA to deliver amazing games and content to inspire the world to play. Now, Chris, Laura and I are here for your questions. Regina, we are ready for questions now. .

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question will come from the line of Andrew Uerkwitz with Jefferies. Please go ahead. .

Andrew Uerkwitz Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, Andrew, Chris and Laura. I wanted to – I would hope you could provide a little bit more color. I'm trying to reconcile some of the comments, from the press release and slide deck and your comments here.

On the one hand it seems like certain titles are doing extraordinarily well; FIFA, Sims, but then in your guidance, you kind of update the expectations for Q4 based here, in particular around launches in games on Q4. So it kind of implies maybe the smaller medium sized titles aren't performing.

So one, I was just curious if that's true; and two, what gives you the confidence that it's mostly macro and not competitive pressures across the other broader industry?.

Chris Suh

Sure. Hi Andrew! This is Chris. I could take this one. So in my prepared commentaries I talked about what we saw in Q3 and the specific trend I point to is the fact that we talked about strong player engagement and high quality titles.

But I also talked about the fact that the highly rated titles didn't perform to the level that we would expect it based on historical expectations for a title of that caliber.

And so we're taking some of those learnings, and I do think that you know when we look at all the data and we analyze what we saw in terms of demand and results, we do believe that that's a reflection of the overall market conditions that we saw continued to mount throughout the quarter, and we've taken those learnings and we applied those into the Q4 guidance.

.

Andrew Uerkwitz Vice President of Investor Relations

Got it. And then just on the mobile side, what kind of learnings are you kind of taking from Apex Mobile, because it was Game of the Year, but clearly you struggled with a little bit of engagement.

Is it who made it; is it the game – you know it’s just too PC based? Could you share kind of the learnings that you've taken away to determine why to cancel this one and cancel the Battlefield title?.

Andrew Wilson Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

One is, there is a level of immersion and complexity to Apex Game Play in particular, which is very much about what Apex is about, verticality of game play and team based play that didn't translate quite as well to mobile devices as we had hoped. I think we've learned a great deal from that.

Second is, the game while it really engaged the core deeply, and it actually attracted a lot of new users, which we think speaks volumes for the future success potential of the franchise, it didn't retain the more casual user at the rate that we needed it to, and in a game that relies a lot on team play and competitive play, liquidity of the overall player base is really, really important as you think about the future experience of players over time.

And then third, I think the mobile market continues to be challenging, and we certainly saw – you know we launched into what was a soft mobile market, and with some changing and evolving kind of player personalities as we move through.

So as we think about this on a go forward basis, we take those learnings and we apply the real strengths, which is we know Apex has incredible demand from both the core users and new more casual users. We know that we have the underlying ingredients to make an incredible game.

We need to be thoughtful about the nature of the core game mechanics and the retention mechanics that we build into the game over time, and most importantly, as we look at the mobile market, the biggest new launches that are seeing the most success are the ones that are deeply connected to the broader franchise, where there's not always cross play, but it's certainly cross progression and a feeling that they are part of a single unified community and a single unified game experience.

And so as we think about that for the future, that will be very, very important as we reimagine Apex Mobile.

And certainly as we had those learning from Apex Mobile and we were developing into Battlefield Mobile, we anticipated that while Battlefield had also been in development for some time and was making good progress, given the construct of that game, it also was probably going to run with some of the same challenges, and rather than continue to push against that, we wanted to come back, take a breath, reset and really think about the broader franchise strategy and allow the leadership to build a true cross platform immersive game experience around a reimagined battlefield in the future.

Both of these things represent strong learning opportunities for us, and both of these things represent an ability for us as a company to lean into two great franchises in a way that the mobile market is more aligned to for the future. .

Andrew Uerkwitz Vice President of Investor Relations

Got it. I really appreciate that color. Thank you, guys. .

Operator

Your next question will come from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. .

Eric Sheridan

Thanks so much. Maybe building on Andrew's questions, so I want to come back first to mobile.

You know how do you think about the array of type of content you have on the mobile side, and how much of it is potentially exposed to sort of casual play that might act in a more sort of hyper sort of volatile mode as consumer monetization might be volatile, depending on what happens with consumer spending going forward, versus maybe some of your sports titles and mobile that have a very different trajectory from a spend perspective.

So I want to sort of broaden out the conversation to what you're actually seeing on the spend side across an array of mobile that really runs the gamut first. And then second, I think we've seen a lot of folks in the industry talk about pushing titles out, out of ‘22 now and into ’23 and calendar ’23 and maybe even calendar ’24.

Is there a broader theme emerging around getting titles right before they launch, or are there elements where you need to see the council cycle possibly be maybe deeper into what it's happened over the last couple of years to maybe see the success. You want to see with some of the titles.

How should we think about the broader narrative around content being pushed out across the industry and with you guys idiosyncratically? Thanks. .

Andrew Wilson Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Innovation, Creativity and Polish. And that last element Polish, the removal of bugs and the removal of potential play frustrations is as important as the innovation and the creativity itself.

And so as we look at our future, we feel that we've been executing extremely well till this point, around the titles and the title updates that we've been launching. We also feel incredibly bullish and positive around the trajectory of Jedi.

And when the team came and sat down and said, ‘Hey, if you let us have just a few more weeks, we think we can deliver even higher quality.’ We really wanted to get behind and support them. After all, this is an incredible team with the first iteration of the franchise that they launched. They broke all kinds of records.

They are deeply committed to the franchise, deeply committed to our partners at Disney and deeply committed to our players, and we really wanted to get behind them and support it, especially as it will not impact the overall health of the franchise.

In fact, it will not only last with a better quality, but almost certainly increase the lifetime value of the franchise over time. .

Eric Sheridan

Thanks Andrew. .

Operator

Your next question will come from the line of Stephen Ju with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. .

Stephen Ju

Okay, thanks. So Andrew, you know we do have a bit of a setback in the transition to mobile, given the developments across Apex and Battlefield.

So naturally this makes us worry a little bit more about how Glu was coming along, because the thesis at the time of the acquisition was to bring some of the success that has had in the more, shall we say the casual sports franchises in exporting that dynamic of FIFA, Madden, etc.

So can you update us on your progress there? And I guess FIFA Online 4, triple digits, that's a pretty remarkable result, and I presume there will be a lot of that is due to the World Cup.

So you know, what do you think the Nexon and/or the Tencent team are doing right, you know to properly monetize the World Cup, and I think you know the recent – I guess, shall we say the last four to eight years, we have not had sort of an equivalent amount of growth in FIFA around the World Cup.

So I'm just wondering if there are some learnings or best practices that you can export out of Korea and China into the western world – the World Cup. Thanks..

Laura Miele President of EA Entertainment & Technology

Hi Stephen! This is Laura. I'm going to take the Glu mobile question. As Andrew framed earlier, we still perceive the mobile market to be significant. It's a $100 billion. It's where Gen Z and Gen Alpha play. It's the platforms they prefer.

It's also a significant platform in growth geographies around the world where we are looking to expand our franchises, so incredibly important market. And as it relates to Glu, we see the genres and markets in the shooter category, the sports category, the casual creation category where females primarily play.

So – and of course the Glu content fits very well into these genres and these categories in the mobile market that are still growing and where we still see a strong connection.

Glu is fully integrated into EA and EA’s mobile teams now, and so as we think about our future of Sims, we of course consider Cabot Fashion Design Home as part of that ecosystem as Andrew has referenced. We think about tapped sports and the potential that we have globally around our sports business. Those are a meaningful part of our growth there.

And we also have had some strong talent, some good tech have been integrated into our overall EA mobile business. So the integration and the transition has happened, and we really consider and look at the mobile business within EA in a very whole way. .

Andrew Wilson Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

And then as we think about FIFA broadly, and more importantly as we think about FC and you think about the growth in that business. I think we should think about it on three vectors. The first vector of course is World Cup, and certainly we saw very strong growth in our business coincided with the World Cup.

The good news about the World Cup, and we've been tracking this for many World Cups as you might imagine, is it's not a moment in time. It actually establishes new fans and brings more people to football.

And while we had some incredible matches during this World Cup and we saw, you know incredible final that pitted Messy versus Mbappe, you know what that does is establish a whole new set of fans for football on a go forward basis.

And so while certainly World Cup was a boost for us, we expected that will create an ongoing benefit over the course of time. The second part of the growth though, it wasn't just about World Cup.

It was the incredible titles that our teams launched, and certainly with what we did in the core FIFA franchise was our biggest and most innovative FIFA yet, with all that we did in and around FIFA Mobile, which was up triple digits, and all the new event content we put into FIFA online and how we really tied that community together into a global football ecosystem, you know interwoven into the fabric of football fandom, that's a really important part of growth.

And what we're seeing now is that we have fans coming into the experience, not just about experiencing one event or one team or one league, but fans coming to experience really to share their love and passion for football with their fans, and really to put it on the line against their rivals.

And so as we think about what the teams have been able to do, we expect that that will continue to drive more growth for us over time. The third one is football more broadly, and if you really track what's going on in the world, football in every part of the world is growing.

It was growing before the World Cup, and it's certainly growing post the World Cup. Premier league, La Liga, League One, MLS, all these leagues are growing in popularity globally, and if you look at what happened for us, we nearly doubled our units in North America FIFA.

That represents a significant opportunity for us in this incredibly sports hungry market.

And so if you take those three things and then you roll that into EA Sports FC that we will launch later this year, where we have significantly more control over the nature of the experience and the things that we can do for fans, we can work more closely together with our partners at a league level, at a team level, at a player level.

We think that well beyond this World Cup and certainly through many World Cups to come, the growth in football for us represents an extraordinary opportunity. .

Stephen Ju

Thank you. .

Operator

Your next question will come from the line of Omar Dessouky with Bank of America. Please go ahead. .

Omar Dessouky

Hey guys! How are you doing? In the past you've given high level assumptions as to your expectations for the growth of the PC and console videogame software market, and I was wondering if you have assumptions for 2023 as to how much they might grow?.

A - Andrew Wilson Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

I don't know that we have given direct assumptions on those markets in time. We may have represented some market data that had been shared with us over time.

We don't have anything to share specifically at this moment, other than what I would say is what we're hearing from our partners, particularly in console, is that a lot of the constraints around their ability to get product to market is pretty much behind us, and that we should expect a fairly strong console supply in the coming quarter and the quarters through the rest of this year.

So that represents a great opportunity for us. We don't yet know how to quantify that. We know that we've been selling into what has been a relatively constrained console market. The demand is incredibly high.

The good news for us as we continue to launch quality software and you combine that with what we believe, we’ll be unconstrained supply of consoles. We think that positions us well in the coming year with respect to our core HD market. .

Omar Dessouky

Okay, thank you. And for Chris, so if I just look at the full year guide of around maybe midpoint about $7.1 billion and about $7.750 billion, which is the guide you guys gave last quarter, I see a difference of 650. If I were to subtract this quarter you know versus your guide and you know I would get about $500,000 or $1 million of push out.

You know that – and of course the Apex Legend. So if I subtract 130 for the under performance in the quarter, and then let's say 20 or so for under performance or cancellation of Apex Legends or sun setting of Apex Legends, I get about $500 million left and obviously that $500 million subtraction is not entirely Star Wars.

So I was wondering if you could break that down for us. So how much of that roughly $500 million that I'm seeing is Star Wars versus FX impact versus the PC console titles that you think might be softer in Q4.

And especially on FX, it looks like the British Pound and the Euro are up about 10 points versus when you guided in November, which would suggest that FX impacts should have been positive. Thanks. .

Chris Suh

Okay, got it. I think I followed all your numbers Omar, so let me see if I could help. So I think directionally if I followed your math, your math is sort of futs, if I could put it that way.

The drivers for Q4 and consequently for the full year are in fact the exact drivers that I talked about previously, which is first and foremost the shift of Jedi from Q4 and into Q1 of FY ’24, that's the most significant impact on the Q4 number. Secondly, as you pointed out, the performance in Q3 relative to our guidance, that's the next one.

And then by extension of that which Andrew asked as well earlier, which was what did we take in terms of learnings from Q3 and how are we applying the current macro environment and the current market conditions against what we know to be high quality launches in Q4, and that’s part of the equation as well into Q4.

And then the fourth one as you pointed out is the sun setting of Apex Mobile. So those are the four primary – I think you have the four primary drivers and that equates the revision in the guidance in Q4. .

Omar Dessouky

Thanks a lot. .

Operator

Your next question will come from the line of Benjamin Soff with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. .

Benjamin Soff

Hey! Thanks guys. I was wondering if we could dig a little bit deeper into the trends that you're seeing in Apex. And within that context, what's your view on whether or not the industry is getting more competitive as a whole, in addition to the macro environment getting a little bit weaker.

And then I just wanted to see what you guys thought about, you know whether or not this is a franchise we should expect to continue to grow in the future, you know given your early color for fiscal ’24. Thanks. .

Andrew Wilson Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so I think that you know as we talked about in the prepared remarks, Apex is traditionally a little quieter in Q3 as the live service ebbs and flows with a launch slate of new titles around the holiday.

I think this was a very strong launch holiday slate, including you know FIFA which performed very well during a World Cup, and certainly there were some competitive titles that were very strong – that had been very weak in prior years quite frankly. And so there was probably a little built up demand around some of those competitive titles.

And so, while you know the franchise still performed incredibly well, just not quite as well as we had expected based on our projection of where the competitive landscape would be.

And we're already starting to see a resurgence of engagement in the franchise, which is again typical of Apex, and we're coming up to a four year anniversary, and we've got a season launch update coming, and we feel very, very good about where the franchise is going. I believe the franchise will continue to grow.

We've got a lot of new things that we can do. While mobile isn't going to be the growth vector today, it will be a growth vector in the future. There's new geographic expansion that we will go to. There will be modalities of play, that the team will – you know additional modalities of play that the team will investigate over the course of time.

As we've always said, we think about this as at least a 10 year franchise. We're just coming up to the fourth anniversary. It's an incredibly successful franchise. Our community is very dedicated to it, very highly engaged.

Our expectation is that we’ll have a strong quarter, but we're also being very deliberate around how we planned for the quarter, given what we've just seen in Q3 around the macro. .

Benjamin Soff

Thanks, guys. .

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Handler with MKM Partners. Please go ahead..

Eric Handler

Good afternoon, and thanks for the question. So you still have a very deep development pipeline going on. So I'm curious, with the cost cuts that you've made, are these temporary cost cuts, are they permanent cost cuts. And as I think about what you said about an early read for next year, sort of mid-single digit revenue and bottom line growth.

Does that mean with these cost cuts, maybe you can get to a flat operating margin year-over-year. .

Chris Suh

Hey Eric! This is Chris. I'll sort of take your questions I think together in – I think it sort of thematically hits on similar things. So let me just talk about sort of our approach to what we've talked about on the call, which is really focusing our investments into our best long term growth opportunities.

I think what you see, that we did in Q3 and Q4, as well as the inferences of what we're going to continue to do in ’24 is a reflection of us continuing to be very disciplined about how we view and really prioritize how we view our growth opportunities.

And so they don't – you know we've been very deliberate and very careful to continue and invest in those things that will bring long term growth and really being very disciplined about the pace of hiring and some of the variable spend that applied to our – you know given the business that we see in the second half of the year.

As we look forward into ’24, I think again, just doing the math on the early guide that I gave, if we're able to achieve the guidance or the preliminary direction that I gave to a mid-single digit top line with a better than that improvement on operating line, it would be margin improvement year-on-year in ’24 versus ’23 for sure. .

Eric Handler

Thank you. .

Operator

Your next question will come from the line of Mike Hickey with The Benchmark Company. Please go ahead. .

Mike Hickey

Hey Andrew, Chris, Laura! Thanks guys for taking my questions. Just two from me. Thanks for the early look on your fiscal ’24 growth opportunity.

Just curious if you could speak to sort of the degree perhaps and the longevity of the macro pressure you're seeing on your players, if you think it's going to get worse before it getter better or how you think about the potential for a recession in job losses, and how that plays into your ’24 guidance, the early look that you gave us.

And then the second question, obviously you didn’t give the number, but I think the FIFA license was rumored to be around $150 million annually. Curious if all that money has been spent as you sort of budget ’24 in terms of right fees with the other partners and maybe incremental marketing spend.

Or if you think there's some cushion there, in your forward fiscal in terms of potential savings. Thanks, guys. .

Chris Suh

Yeah, I could certainly take that one. As we talked about, we're operating in a time when there's greater uncertainty and greater unpredictability in the market. And we saw that in Q3.

As we look forward into FY’24 I would say that the early direction we gave assumes really based on the best information we have now, which is you know we're not in the business of forecasting markets or GDP or macro, but we do know the trends that we see now that we executed Q3 with and that we are seeing entering Q4.

And so I would say that the best way to think about FY’24 is that the underlying market assumptions that are neither material improvement nor material worsening in that macro environment that we're operating in.

And then obviously, as we continue to go on and get closer to the quarters, we'll have more certainty with the out quarters that we are looking at.

In terms of the FIFA math associated with the license fees, you know the way that I would encourage you to think about it is that, in FY ’24, it's such an important transition year for what is, our biggest franchise, and our focus is really about making sure that we build the greatest experience in terms of bringing the players along with us in the journey.

It never has been solely about the profit margins associated with this transition, and so we are completely focused on making the transition in the launch of EA SPORTS FC a really fantastic experience for players. .

Andrew Wilson Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

The one piece I would add to that around that, and concur with Chris, it's not so much about what did we pay fee for or what won't we pay fee for the future. I think that we will invest meaningfully into the franchise to grow it through this phase.

Again, we have really said this is not just about a change of the sign on the front of the game, but a real sign of change in terms of what we offer the players over time.

And we do believe that we can offer a bigger, more comprehensive, more immersive global football fan experience within our games and beyond the bounds of our games, working with our great partners around the world.

And as we think about investing in that in ’24 and maybe even deeply in ’25, we believe it will pay meaningful dividends over the course of time. This is a franchise that we've been investing in for 30 years. I couldn't be more excited about the next 30 years of the franchise, and what we'll be able to do.

And so I think our focus right now is really how do we set ourselves up to realize the fullness of the potential of developing the preeminent interactive football fan community in the world. .

Chris Evenden

We’ll take the next question please. .

Operator

Your next question, you will come from the line of Matthew Cost with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. .

Matthew Cost

Hi everyone! Thanks taking the questions. Just on some of the commentary about mobile, you've talked about some challenges in the mobile game industry and some macro headwinds. I guess you know at this point we're a fair bit of the way, maybe a year into weakness in the mobile market.

Are you seeing a real differentiation in terms of the stickiness and the predictability of your players on the PC and council side versus mobile, that's question one. And then the second one is just, can you quantify the guidance impact of delaying Star Wars into the next fiscal year? Thanks..

Laura Miele President of EA Entertainment & Technology

Hi Matt! On the mobile sickness as you said, we measured certainly by engagement. And I would say it varies across the mobile experiences we have.

As we've discussed our strategy and how we are thinking about the future, it’s really around how the mobile platform can contribute to the overall connected ecosystems of franchises and what we're seeing, as in Andrew mentioned, as players play on the go, as Gen Z and Gen Alpha market, you know addressable market expands as every year goes by, it’s going to be very important for us to show up on the right platforms for the right moments and right experiences.

So we're seeing in some of our, as we discussed on FIFA Mobile is we've had we have significant engagement and significant acquisitions into this franchise, because of the mobile game that we have.

And that's how we're really looking at the incredible assets that we have around casual creator games for our Sims products, our sports games and really dial that up to connect into the ecosystems, because they can be a meaningful contributor of new players, engagement and connection into a high def experience. .

Andrew Wilson Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Great! And Matt, let me jump in on the question about the guidance.

So as we talked about in some form in some of the other questions, the move of Jedi to Q1 is the most material driver of the Q4 guidance revision, And it’s a significant part of the full year revision as well, depending on which wins that you're taking a looking at the at the guidance numbers.

Again, just again reiterating that from a lifetime economic standpoint, the move to Q1 is better for the overall game, the ecosystem and for the brand, and again importantly, given the timing of the original launch in March versus now in April, it doesn't change our cash flow forecast for Q4 nor for FY’24. .

Matthew Cost

Great! Thank you. .

Operator

Our final question will come from the line of David Karnovsky with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. .

David Karnovsky

Hey! Thank you for fitting me in. Chris, you noted your forward view is based on trends currently or where you exit in Q3, but wondering if maybe you could speak just to the phasing of kind of the economic impact through the fiscal third quarter.

Did you see player engagement or monetization kind of change at all? Was there anything specific to call on the holiday period. And they're just given the news around Apex and Battlefield, any update on Lord of the Rings, that you still plan to launch this game, you know anything you could say around the soft launch? Thank you. .

Andrew Wilson Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Great, okay, and I'll start and then turn it over to Laura to talk about Lord of the Rings.

The shape of the quarter, and I think you know, in some of the materials, we talked about how uncertainty mounted throughout the course of the quarter, and I think that’s a – that’s probably a good reflection of what we saw, and it is a quarter where the results were mixed.

Where we were continuing to watch the strength in FIFA, the strength and FIFA that occurred throughout the quarter, and in particular at the end of the quarter.

And then we were also watching the performance of these high quality titles, and how they launch in the market reception to that and both from a player, and a reviewer, as well as a monetization standpoint. So I'd say we were, understanding, absorbing and analyzing you know different data points throughout the course of the quarter.

But as I talked about, in particular the things that led to the our performance in Q3 and the extension of that into Q4 were specifically related to high quality launches and the pattern I would say of recognition of what we would expect in terms of return, versus launches of that caliber, and that was very specific to the titles that launched on those dates in the quarter, as well as just the macro, I would say market gravity that we saw across smaller titles throughout the quarter.

.

Laura Miele President of EA Entertainment & Technology

Hi David! To answer your question about Lord of the Rings Mobile. As a reminder, this is a team that created Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, which has been one of our most successful mobile games, and we're over $1 billion in net bookings on that.

They are currently actively working on Lord of the Rings and soft launch currently and so we expect a full launch on that mobile game this coming year. .

Andrew Wilson Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Okay. So thank you all for joining us for this quarter. We appreciate the support. We appreciate the good questions and the engagement today, and we'll speak to you next quarter. .

Operator

That will conclude today's meeting. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect..

ALL TRANSCRIPTS
2024 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2023 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2022 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2021 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2020 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2019 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2018 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2017 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2016 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2015 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2014 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1