What Were the Major Highlights for Activision in 1Q16?
What's Driving Activision Blizzard's Growth?
Expanding audience reach
As we saw in the earlier part of this series, Activision (ATVI) completed the acquisition of King (KING) in February, and the combined entity now has a monthly user base (or MAU) of 544 million. Activision had the biggest ever 1Q16 online player community in its history with MAUs of 55 million, an increase of 10% YoY (year-over-year).
Activision continues to have four of the top ten games on next-generation consoles including Xbox (MSFT), Japan-based (EWJ) PlayStation (SNE), and Nintendo (NTDOY).
Increasing user engagement
In the trailing-12-month period at the end of 1Q16, Activision had about 42 billion hours of played and watched time spent. This is in line with some of the largest entertainment networks around the world including Netflix (NFLX) and Facebook (FB).
The CEO of Activision, Robert Kotick, stated, “We are confident that we can further build on this momentum as we expand our ability to deliver more frequent and meaningful content updates on our core franchises and provide new ways for our audiences to engage with our franchises.”
Player investment
In 1Q16, Activision Blizzard’s non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) revenues from in-house game content rose 20% YoY from Activision and Blizzard’s business, and it rose 80% with the inclusion of King’s quarterly results.
Activision’s most popular game, Call of Duty, is setting new records for in-game content sales. The franchise more than doubled the number of players who purchased in-game content while maintaining average revenue per paying user.
King’s metrics improved quarter-over-quarter in terms of monthly unique players, gross bookings per paying player, as well as overall gross bookings compared to 2015. The successful Candy Crush franchise also saw growth driven by the launch of Candy Crush Jelly Saga in 1Q16 and continued strong performance of its first two games.
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