Industry / Console Comparison

[AeroEngy]

I just finished taking a class on Management of Technical Operations. In this class we had to choose a company to research and perform an analysis of. I picked Activision.

From this I had to do a lot of research and pour through a ton of SEC filings (mostly form 10-k). Anyway I thought I would share a couple of interesting Tables and Charts I made.

Financial Data (EA vs. Activision)
Disclaimers.
1) Gray items = no data given. Both EA and Activision periodically change how they break down their Revenue.
2) EA's "Other" category is for revenue from distribution, subscriptions, licensing, etc. Activsion does not have an "Other" because it broke distribution etc into PC, Console, and Hand-held so I added them to the publishing totals for an overall number.

Activision Revenue by Type
Interesting the huge growth of % of Revenue from console sales and the relative stagnation of the PC market.

Breakdown by Console - Data
Disclaimers
1) Activision's numbers are from publishing only and do not include $ from Distribution. This is because they did not divide their distribution revenue by specific console.

Breakdown by Console - Chart
This is chart of the combined data (EA and Activision) from the Breakdown by Console data.

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edit for formatting, clarity, and spelling (I suck at spelling)

 

[Cuda1447]

Your quote in your sig is the quote I put in my senior year book.

 

[AeroEngy]

I think that it is from Saturday Night Live one of the Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey.

 

[mugs]

Are the 2008 numbers projections? Their projections? Amazing that Activision's PS2 revenues are still going UP substantially. I guess that could be partially due to acquisitions? Because if their PS2 revenues continued to increase during this generation I'd expect it to be higher than the Xbox 360, but it isn't.

 

[AeroEngy]

Originally posted by: mugs
Are the 2008 numbers projections? Their projections? Amazing that Activision's PS2 revenues are still going UP substantially. I guess that could be partially due to acquisitions? Because if their PS2 revenues continued to increase during this generation I'd expect it to be higher than the Xbox 360, but it isn't.

No they are not projections. All numbers are from their annual report (Form 10-k ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934). EA and Activision just work on a fiscal year that ends March 31st so the numbers they claim for 2008 are really mostly form 2007.

I also found it interesting that Activision's PS2 numbers continued to climb. I checked the SEC filing - Item 7 (Management Discussion) they explain as follows:

In general, there was an overall decline in industry sales of titles for the PS2 as more consumers migrated to the next-generation platforms as compared to the prior year. However, net revenues from sales of our titles for the PS2 increased 43% from $500.9 million for the year ended March 31, 2007 to $716.9 million for the year ended March 31, 2008. The key titles impacting the fiscal 2008 results were Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, Bee Movie Game, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, Guitar Hero: Rocks the 80s, Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, and TRANSFORMERS: The Game and the continued momentum for our fiscal 2007 third quarter titles. This compares to the titles released in fiscal 2007 such as Call of Duty 3, the number three title overall in dollars for the third quarter fiscal 2007, according to The NPD Group, and Guitar Hero II (game and accessories), the number one best-selling title in dollars on the PS2 platform for the third quarter fiscal 2007 per The NPD Group. Also, in fiscal 2007, we released Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Over the Hedge, Tony Hawk's Project 8, X-Men: The Official Game, Shrek Smash N' Crash Racing and our European affiliate title, LucasArts' Star Wars Lego 2. As a percentage of publishing net revenues, net revenues from the PS2 decreased from 45% for the year ended March 31, 2007 to 29% for the year ended March 31, 2008. This was mainly attributable to the growth of net revenues from the next-generation platforms at a faster pace than revenues from the PS2.

 

[AeroEngy]

As a side note, this is why I chose Activision as my research company. Stock Comparison Chart

We had to do a "Collins" Analysis based on Jim Collins book "Good to Great". One of the first criteria is that the company had to have a transition point where the stock outperformed the general market and its industry/competitors considerably for several years.