EA
- $4 delivered strong fourth-quarter results.
- The company said rival video-game maker Epic Games' Fortnite, the "hottest game in years," had a limited impact on the video game publisher's results.
- Electronic Arts management said the emergence of Fortnite was good for the video-game industry.
- $4
$4 brushed off concerns around the emergence of $4 the "hottest game in years," in its quarterly earnings call Tuesday.
The video-game company best known for FIFA and Battlefield, proved with its strong fourth-quarter results that Fortnite isn't a threat and may be expanding the gaming market rather than stealing customers. Shares are up more than 3% in early trading Wednesday.
"We do think in the case of Fortnite, it's helped grow the whole marketplace," Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen said on his company's fourth-quarter earnings call. "It's bringing younger people into the marketplace and younger people into first-person shooters. And I think that's good for the long-run health of that category for all of us in the industry, not just one player."
Fortnite, a battle royale-style game owned by Epic Games, has taken the video game community by storm in recent months. The game $4with its "freemium" business model that allows players to run the game 100% free on consoles and pay for add-on purchases. The game is also available to play on mobile. In March alone, Fortnite raked in $4 across all platforms, according to research firm Superdata.
But the popularity of Fortnite appears to have had little impact on Electronic Arts. The video game maker reported earnings of $1.28 per share on revenue of $1.26 billion. Those numbers were ahead of the $1.16 and $1.24 billion that analysts were anticipating.
O'Shea says EA has a couple of things going for it. He thinks excitement will likely build around its FIFA game as the World Cup will take place during this summer, and predicts the newest Battlefield game will follow in the footsteps of Fortnite and release a kind of "battle royale" mode.
Electronic Arts is up nearly 16% this year.
