EA posts $340 million Q2 loss

30 October 2011

While 715 million dollars sounds like enough to build your own Olympic-sized Scrooge McDuck swimming pool of money, it’s not enough to stop EA from reporting a Q2 Financial Year 2012 loss of 340 million dollars overall, which is enough to build a waterpolo-sized pool of money (before setting fire to it).

The 715 million dollars in sales revenue is actually an increase of 22.5 percent, no doubt  due to the enormous amount of Battlefield 3 units shipped, but despite this huge boost it hasn’t been enough to stop EA from posting a massive overall loss.

The publisher has however claimed the crown of biggest publisher in the Western market, by increasing its market share four percent to a tidy 25 percent overall.

The biggest increase for the company has been in digital sales, shooting up 45 percent from $161 million to $234 million, showing perhaps that as much as people might hate Origin, they’ll use it if they must. Boxed sales, by comparison, stayed relatively on par with last year, making a small move up from $441 million to $450 million.

“Well, alright. If I have to.”

The gross profit on all sales was $283 million, but this was overshadowed by operating costs of $657 million.

Despite these losses, CEO John Riccitello says, “We are pleased to report a strong second quarter with results ahead of the top and bottom line expectations that we provided on our last earnings call.”

“Our results reflected a tremendous performance by our EA Sports titles and a strong showing for our newest game on the Facebook platform, The Sims Social.”

Battlefield has sold an incredible ten million copies already, which EA says is “meeting expectations”. Riccitello adds that they believe the title will continue to do well through the holiday season and into next year. Battlefield 3 has been the company’s biggest launch event to date, with FIFA 12 trailing behind at a sell-through of nearly 8 million copies.

EA remains optimistic, upping its predictions for next quarter to a non-GAAP sales figure of $1.55 billion to $1.65 billion, putting most of their eggs in the Star Wars: The Old Republic basket.

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