Activision-Blizzard Q1 2021 financials: Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years

Authored by massivelyop.com and submitted by enterthedragonpunch

Welcome back, my friends: It’s time for another Activision-Blizzard investor report, and we’re expecting this one to be a ride. Readers will recall that it’s been a wild couple of years for the company as 2019 saw mass layoffs, the Blitzchung boycott, a weak BlizzCon, and plunging YOY revenues for five straight quarters in May 2019, August 2019, November 2019, February 2020, and May 2020. Q1 2020’s revenue drop was very slight and close to flattening, and then in Q2, YOY revenues for the company were up for the first time in six quarters thanks to COVID-19 lockdowns. Q3 saw those revenues hold steady, while Q4 saw revenues up 17%, suggesting the company had finally turned a real corner, despite pretending to investors everything was fine the whole time.

But this time around, the investor report is coming on the heels of some massive public relations disasters, as Activision-Blizzard forced yet another round of layoffs and investor groups alleged that CEO Bobby Kotick could pocket as much as $200M in bonuses. Last week, the company announced it was halving Kotick’s future salary and bonuses, which frankly seems like an empty gesture under the circumstances, given that investors have been agitating for this for a year, and the timing of the announcement implied an effort to soothe ruffled investor feathers.

In any case, now we have Q1’s results, which were actually just fine. Better than fine, with revenues of $2.28B, a significant increase compared to this quarter last year, though of course this quarter last year wasn’t great to begin with. Once again, the moneymakers are Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush.

“For the quarter ended March 31, 2021, Activision Blizzard’s net revenues presented in accordance with GAAP were $2.28 billion, as compared with $1.79 billion for the first quarter of 2020. GAAP net revenues from digital channels were $2.01 billion. GAAP operating margin was 35%. GAAP earnings per diluted share were $0.79, as compared with $0.65 for the first quarter of 2020. On a non-GAAP basis, Activision Blizzard’s operating margin was 43% and earnings per diluted share were $0.98, as compared with $0.76 for the first quarter of 2020. For the quarter, operating cash flow was $844 million, as compared with $148 million for the first quarter of 2020. For the trailing twelve-month period, operating cash flow was $2.95 billion.”

As to Blizzard specifically, the company talks up WoW Classic and World of Warcraft Shadowlands, which apparently drove Blizzard’s revenue growth of 7% YOY. Hearthstone appears to be doing well too. The presser reiterates a global launch for Diablo Immortal this year.

As we noted last month, Blizzard continues to lose monthly active users across all of its titles; it’s now lost 11M players in the last three years, or 29% as measured by Blizzard’s own preferred monthly active user count. Two million of those dried up just since Q4 2020. Brutal. MAUs going back to Q1 2018:

35M in Q4 2018 (mass layoffs)

33M in Q3 2019 (WoW Classic)

29M in Q4 2020 (COVID-19, Shadowlands)

27M in Q1 2021 (this quarter)

We’ll be updating with the important-to-us bits from the conference call below as it rolls on. Some context in the meanwhile:

Wasabicannon on May 5th, 2021 at 05:31 UTC »

Well ya they shifted from a fun game that I WANT to spend all of my time playing to games that punish you if you DONT spent all of your time playing their game.

It is the same shit that battle passes do. Play our game with all of your free time or you may not unlock everything you already paid for.

Nightchade on May 5th, 2021 at 05:19 UTC »

Kinda what happens when you shit on the people who have supported you for 30 years, yeah.

Mallouwed on May 5th, 2021 at 04:32 UTC »

I realized the other day, they havent released a new game in like 5 or 6 years. Just remasters of shit they own from a time when the company was actually creative