Today Electronic Arts released its financial results for the third quarter of the fiscal year 2021, related to the period between October 1 and December 31, 2020.
Firstly, the press release includes statements from chief executive officer Andrew Wilson and chief operating and financial officer Blake Jorgensen.
Wilson boasts about the publisher’s growth.
“We’re bringing great entertainment to hundreds of millions of people all over the world.
Our amazing teams continue to deliver exceptional, high-quality experiences as more players connect with their friends and engage deeply with our games. With our expansion plans for EA SPORTS, strong catalogue of owned IP, leading live services, and ability to span every platform, we are growing to reach an even larger audience.”
Jorgensen mentions that EA raised its outlook for the full year due to the strength of the business, mentioning that the publisher expert further growth next year (starting on April 1) due to the next Battlefield game.
“We delivered another strong quarter, driven by live services outperformance in Ultimate Team and Apex Legends.
We are raising our net bookings outlook for the full year on the strength we continue to see in our business. Looking further ahead, even with the upside this year, we anticipate delivering growth in fiscal 2022, driven by the next Battlefield.”
We also get a number of highlights of the publisher’s performance and financial metrics. We learn that over the past fiscal year, EA Sports franchises “engaged more than 230 million people, while The Sims 4 has passed 33 million players, recording record average players in December on all metrics.
The latest update was at 30 million by July 2020.
- Net bookings for the trailing twelve months was $5.956 billion, up 8% year-over-year.
- Launched FIFA 21, Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered, and NHL 21 during the quarter.
- Launched FIFA 21 and Madden NFL 21 on next generation consoles during the quarter.
- Over the past fiscal year, EA SPORTS franchises have engaged more than 230 million people.
- FIFA Ultimate Team had a record of nearly 6 million daily active players in December.
- Apex Legends had 30% growth in new players, year-over-year.
- The Sims 4, life to date, has more than 33 million players and reached record daily, weekly, and monthly average players in December.
- Net cash provided by operating activities was $1.124 billion for the quarter and a record $2.061 billion for the trailing twelve months.
- EA repurchased 2.5 million shares for $326 million during the quarter, bringing the total for the last twelve months to 5.9 million shares for $695 million.
- EA paid a cash dividend of $0.17 per share during the quarter.
Below you can see a table summarizing the latest financial statistics.
If you’d like to compare, you can check out the results for the previous quarter, which were disclosed in November.
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