Blizzard Entertainment Record Sales Boost Activision Blizzard Q2 Profits to $587M

Credit: Activision Blizzard

While its acquisition by Microsoft has been pushed back, Activision Blizzard put another highly profitable quarter on the books. The American video game holding company published its financial earnings for the second quarter of 2023 on Wednesday morning. The company generated net revenues of $2.21B USD, up 34.8% from $1.64B in the same period of 2022.

Activision Blizzard reports key performance indicators for its three business segments, Activision Publishing (console games), Blizzard Entertainment (PC games), and King (mobile games). Spread over all its assets, the company reported a player base of 361M monthly active users (MAUs).

Activision Publishing had 94M MAUs in the second quarter as its most popular franchise, Call of Duty, approaches its 20-year anniversary in October with around 90M monthly players, with more than half of all engagement coming from mobile. Lifetime player spending on Call of Duty Mobile, which launched in October 2019, has passed the $3B mark during the period. The segment generated net revenues of $574M in Q2, a 17% increase in comparison to the same period in 2022 driven by the Call of Duty franchise.

Blizzard Entertainment’s franchises combined for 27M MAUs and generated revenues of $1.05B during the period. In comparison to Q2 2022, Blizzard’s revenues jumped 160% driven by the launch of Diablo IV, which was played by more than 10M users in June. Simultaneously player engagement and involvement in Overwatch 2 declined from last quarter. The segment’s operating income more than tripled on a year-over-year basis at $409M.

King reported 240M MAUs and contributed revenues of $747M to Activision Blizzard’s total revenues. The segment’s revenues increased by 9% year-over-year driven by the performance of its Candy Crush franchise. King’s operating income was $266M.

In addition to its game development and publishing business, Activision Blizzard provided an update on its franchised Overwatch League esports project. The company will make changes to the league’s rules and provide teams that do not want to continue their participation a termination fee of $6M. The Esports Advocate reported on the OWL’s latest development and a layoff of less than 50 esports department employees in-depth earlier today.

Across all its segments, Activision Blizzard booked a net income of $587M or $0.75 EPS (earnings per share), a 109.6% increase year-over-year compared to a net income of $280M in Q2 2022. The company ended the quarter with a net cash position of approximately $9.5B.