Electronic Arts Reports Q3 Earnings, Strong Game Engagement

Shares of Electronic Arts Inc (NASDAQ: EA) are falling after reporting third-quarter earnings.

What Happened: EA reported third-quarter adjusted earnings per share of $3.06 and revenue of $1.67 billion.

Third-quarter net bookings were $2.4 billion versus a total of $2 billion in the prior year period. Net bookings for the trailing 12 months were $5.96 billion, up 8% year over year.

Live service revenue was $951 million in the third quarter. Full game revenue was $722 million in the third quarter.

Related Link: Why November And December Are Critical For Video Game Sales

Why It’s Important: The third quarter saw the release of “FIFA 21,” “Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond,” “Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered” and “NHL 21” games. “FIFA 21” and “Madden NFL 21” were released for the next generation consoles from Sony (NYSE: SNE) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) in the quarter.

EA Sports continued to be a strong performing franchise for the company with 230 million engaged fans in the fiscal year. FIFA Ultimate Team hit 6 million daily active players in the month of December.

Outside of sports games, “Apex Legends” and “The Sims 4” saw strong growth with Apex increasing new players by 30% year-over-year and The Sims hitting new daily, weekly and monthly average player highs in the month of December.

What’s Next: EA announced earlier Tuesday it signed an exclusive partnership with CLC to bring back an NCAA College Football video game. This game could be a highlight of the next fiscal year’s game lineup.

The company is guiding for full-year revenue of $5.6 billion. Early talk of fiscal 2022 calls for “delivering growth” even after a strong fiscal 2021.

Price Action: Shares of Electronic Arts are down 5% to $141.50 in after-hours trading. Shares hit 52-week highs of $150.30 earlier in the regular session.