The company updated guidance for both the third quarter and the 2015 full year. Activision Blizzard expects $0.14 in EPS on $930 million for the third quarter versus consensus estimates of $0.14 in EPS on $873.03 million in revenue. For the full year the company expects $1.30 in EPS on $4.6 billion in compared to consensus estimates of $1.23 in EPS on $4.47 billion in revenue.
In May 2015, Activision Blizzard paid a cash dividend of $0.23 per common share, a 15% increase year-over-year, totaling $170 million. The company did not make any share repurchases during the second quarter under its $750 million share repurchase authorization ending February 2017.
Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, commented on earnings:
Our strategic focus on expanding our franchise portfolio with captivating and original new intellectual property, innovating on new platforms, and expanding into new geographies is reflected in our results. We outperformed our Q2 targets and last year’s results on revenues, digital growth, and earnings per share. These strong results and the excitement for our future games have driven us to raise our full-year outlook.
Kotick continued:
Our audience size and the total amount of time people spend with our franchises continue to grow. In the second quarter, our monthly active users grew by 35% year-over-year, and the time our communities spent playing our games grew by 25% year-over-year.
At the end of the second quarter the company had $4.42 billion in cash and cash equivalents compared to $4.85 billion at the end of December 2014.
It’s worth mentioning that Activision Blizzard was briefly halted just after the close at 4:03 p.m. Eastern, and resumed trading soon after.
Shares of Activision Blizzard closed Tuesday up 0.6% at $25.67 on a 52-week trading range of $17.73 to $26.45. Following the release of earnings report, shares were initially up 6.2% at $27.25 just after the shares were released from their halt. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $28.69.
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