Activision rides 'Guitar Hero' gold to massive profits Posted by Daniel Terdiman
Who'd have thought a guitar game could help one of the world's biggest video game companies double its earnings?
That's what happened though, as demonstrated by Activision's third-quarter earnings, which it reported Thursday afternoon.
According to the company, which was recently bought by communications giant Vivendi, Activision brought in third-quarter profits of $272.2 million, nearly twice its profits of $142.8 million from the same quarter a year ago.
Why?
Well, it's clear that a huge part of it is massive sales of the company's explosive hit, Guitar Hero III.
Other games, too, most notably, Call of Duty 4, played a role. But it's surely the millions of people out there "strumming" on plastic guitars that really put the oomph in Activision's bottom line during the third quarter.
Ariad Pharmaceuticals Q4 Loss Widens Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ARIA | news | PowerRating | PR Charts ) reported a fourth quarter net loss of $15.7 million or $0.23 loss per share, compared to a net loss of $14.4 million or $0.22 loss per share, for the same quarter of last year.
Total license revenue for the quarter was $1.60 million, up from $208 thousand in the year ago quarter.
Analysts surveyed by First Call/Thomson Financial expected the company to report a loss of $0.21 per share on revenues of $3.29 million in the fourth quarter.
For fiscal 2008, the Company estimates cash used in operations of $41 million to $44 million.
2/7/2008 7:06:10 AM I2 Technologies, Inc. (ITWO) on Thursday reported fourth-quarter net income of $5.82 million or $0.19 per share, compared to a net income of $15.08 million, or $0.54 per share, for the year-ago quarter.
Net income applicable to common stockholders totaled $5.04 million, down from $14.3 million in the prior year.
On a non-GAAP basis, earnings per share applicable to common shareholders for the quarter were $0.26, compared to $0.52 last year.
On average, three analysts polled by First Call/ Thomson Financial expected the company to report earnings of $0.30 per share.
Open Text reports surge in second-quarter profit Business software firm Open Text Corp (OTC.TO: Quote, Profile, Research)(OTEX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) reported a higher second-quarter profit on Thursday as increased license, support and service revenues lifted results.
Open Text said it earned $10.68 million, or 20 cents a share, for the three months ended Dec. 31. That was up from a profit of $2.27 million, or 4 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. The key adjusted profit figure hit 50 cents a share, up from 35 cents a share a year before.
Revenue hit $182.5 million, up 11.8 percent from $163.2 million.
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