Take-Two pushes sales up, misses bottom line guidance

Take-Two today reported its financial results for the three months ended December 31, and they paint a mixed picture of the company's performance for the holiday season.

Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Take-Two chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick touted the company's holiday slate of releases, mostly updating numbers revealed around Take-Two's last earnings report. Mafia III has now sold-in approximately 5 million copies, while Civilization VI has surpassed 1.5 million units sold-in. NBA 2K17 has sold-in nearly 7 million units (up about 10% year-over-year), while Grand Theft Auto V continues to move copies, with sell-in now topping 75 million. Its recurrent consumer spending business (virtual currency, microtransactions, and DLC)has also done well, Zelnick said, noting that Grand Theft Auto Online posted a record number of players in December.

Despite some of those numbers, the quarter was not an unqualified success. The publisher reported GAAP net revenues of $476.5 million, up 15% year-over-year but near the low end of its $475 million to $525 million guidance. Additionally, Take-Two's guidance called for a net income of $17 million to $30 million, but it ultimately posted a net loss of $29.9 million for the quarter.

"I know it's a bit clouded by GAAP reporting, which requires us to defer revenues, and requires us to accelerate costs related to those deferred revenues, so we have a mismatch," Zelnick explained. "It can look like, from a GAAP point of view, that we're not doing as well as we're doing from a bookings and cash flow point of view."

Total bookings for the quarter did indeed jump 51% year-over-year to $719 million, with the aforementioned titles and WWE 2K17 serving as the largest contributors to that number. Bookings from recurrent consumer spending did particularly well, growing 55% year-over-year and making up 23% of the company's total bookings.

The holiday quarter also saw the release of Take-Two's first VR efforts, Carnival Games VR and NBA2K VR Experience. The company didn't provide any performance metrics for those titles, but it's clear Zelnick wasn't counting on them to contribute too much.

"We were happy to bring the titles to market because it was a reflection of the fact we have the R&D abilities to address video games in a VR format if and when that's a meaningful part of the business," he said. "I have expressed skepticism in the past, and I think that's been borne out by the fact that the market for VR in video games remains quite small."

Zelnick also addressed the company's $250 million acquisition of Social Point, the Barcelona-based mobile developer of Dragon City and Monster Legends. As for how the new studio will be integrated into the company, Zelnick said the goal was more to support them to continue doing what they've already been successful doing, while being mindful not to mess with what works.

"What we like about Social Point is they have multiplicity, it's not just one [hit] and that distinguishes them from a lot of people in this space," Zelnick said. "And they know how to monetize those hits and interact with their audience. I'm hoping we can help them grow even faster, but minimally, we want to be supportive so they can keep doing what brought them to this place in the first place... the way we tend to integrate new creative acquisitions is we want those companies to retain their identity and their independence, and to continue to do what works in the market."

That's not to say the company is abandoning all hope of synergy. Zelnick said he hopes Take-Two can help lend its experience in Asian markets to help Social Point find success in those territories, while acknowledging that Take-Two can probably learn a few things about monetizing in a free-to-play environment that could be brought to bear on titles like NBA 2K Online and WWE Supercard.