Activision Blizzard reports historic earnings amid big layoffs - Gamasutra

Activision Blizzard published its 2018 earnings report today, and while the company's revenues rose year-over-year CEO Bobby Kotick stated that "we didn't realize our full potential."

According to the release, Activision Blizzard generated $7.5 billion in revenues during the twelve months ending December 31st; $2.38 billion of that revenue came in during the company's fourth quarter, which coincides with the holiday shopping season.

Both of those numbers are higher than they were during the same period a year ago, but the company's net bookings (another way to measure revenues) for the holiday quarter were $2.84 billion, which is less than the $3.04 billion some Wall Street analysts were predicting.

That plus a lower-than-expected forecast for Activision Blizzard's first quarter of 2019 (the company predicts $6 billion in revenues) helped push the company's stock value down today alongside the earnings report.

"While our financial results for 2018 were the best in our history, we didn't realize our full potential," Kotick states in the report. "To help us reach our full potential, we have made a number of important leadership changes."

The company is also laying off a lot of people (current estimates are about 800 staff) this week in some "restructuring" that the company predicts will cost it roughly $150 million.

"The number of developers working on Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Overwatch, Warcraft, Hearthstone and Diablo
in aggregate will increase approximately 20% over the course of 2019," reads another excerpt of the release. "The company will fund this greater investment by de-prioritizing initiatives that are not meeting expectations and reducing certain non-development and administrative-related costs across the business. The company is also integrating its global and regional sales and go-to-market, partnerships, and sponsorships capabilities."

It's also increasing how much it pays its shareholders by roughly 9 percent, noting in the release that it'll pay out a cash divident of $0.37 cents a share next month.

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