Two of Activision’s biggest releases from last year are still making it plenty of money.
Activision reported the results of its first quarter today, and the company revealed that it generated more than $703 million in revenue. That outdid Wall Street expectations of $655 million. In terms of earnings, Activision reported 16 cents per share as opposed to the 7 cents that most analysts were anticipating. This is another monster quarter for the Call of Duty publisher, which seemingly outperforms its guidance every time it makes one of these reports.
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Both of those games should continue to contribute significantly to Activision’s bottom line as Hearthstone just hit smartphones for the first time and Destiny gets two major expansions this year.
But it’s not just the new hits that are producing results for Activision. The company noted that Call of Duty’s sales were up as a franchise “by a double-digit percentage year-over-year.” That’s due largely to Advanced Warfare, which has had positive word-of-mouth buzz and an increase in the average revenue each user is producing thanks to downloadable content.
Call of Duty, Destiny, and Hearthstone are all also big drivers of one of the metrics that Activision chief executive officer Bobby Kotick continues to trumpet — engagement.
“In the last 12 months, we had over 150 million active users around the world who played our games for more than 12 billion hours and spectators who watched over a billion hours of linear programming based on our games,” Kotick said in a statement. “In the past year, Activision Blizzard’s communities grew by more than 25 percent. This deepening level of engagement with a widening base of players across our franchises is what drove another successful quarter.”
Looking ahead to the entirety of Activision’s financial 2015, the company is raising its guidance based on the Q1 results. The publisher now expects to generate $4.425 billion in revenue with an earnings per share of $1.20.