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Take-Two Takes Financial Hit

Posted by Zonk on from the money-lost-to-bullies dept.

Gamespot reports that Take-Two Entertainment, publishers of titles like Civ IV, has reported much lower earnings than in the previous year in the same period. From the article: "There were several reasons behind the shortfall. Though Take-Two had three Xbox 360 launch titles--Amped 3, NBA 2K6, and NHL 2K6--and a solid PC hit in the form of Civilization IV, the company admits it had a lackluster Christmas in 2005. 'Clearly, the holiday season did not live up to anyone's expectations,' said Paul Eibeler, Take-Two's president and CEO, in a statement."

6 of 24 comments (clear)

  1. 3 Xbox launch titles aren't particularly lucrative by republican+gourd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... when there aren't any Xbox's to play them on. I've seen shelves and shelves and shelves of Xbox 360 games for *weeks* now. The '07 sports stuff might well be current before 360's are commonly available.

  2. hmmm... by Brantano · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe they'll try to make a new, original game, instead of rehashing there old titles?

    1. Re:hmmm... by Chyeld · · Score: 3, Funny

      Obviously you haven't really read the title of the company. It's "Take TWO", they don't make originals.

  3. Gimme a friggin break by billybob · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Of course the sales will be down from same period last year - that's when GTA:San Andreas came out. Did they really expect to even come close to that?

    More importantly, who gives a crap, other than stock holders. They still had 1.2 billion in sales. Obviously only a part of that number will be profit, but the important thing is they still MADE MONEY. How is that a bad thing? :P

    --
    Joseph?
    1. Re:Gimme a friggin break by Discopete · · Score: 3, Insightful

      More importantly, who gives a crap, other than stock holders

      The Stockholders are the ones who the company cares about. Not you or me (unless were stockholders.)
      This lackluster performance could in some investors eyes signal a preview of what is yet to come, causing them to reduce or liquidate their holdings in take-two. As the stock hits the market, the price drops and that in turn indicates that the company is doing something wrong.

      Most of the employees probably have a decent portion of the compensation given to them in the form of employee stock options. As the price of the stock drops, the value of the stock options decrease, lowering the employees compensation and normally their morale as well. Which can lead to defections to other companies and a general sliding of take-two's stock price progressively lower, which leads to lower compensation, lower morale, higher defections, etc.

      We don't matter, the stockholders do, period. If it makes the stock holders happy, the company will try to do it, regardless of what we think.

  4. they're playing accounting games, too... by Malor · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bill Harris over at Dubious Quality has been talking some about Take 2. He pointed out, a few days ago, that they're using an old trick.... reserves.

    When something bad happens, you 'set aside' an obscenely large amount of money to 'deal with the problem'. You announce, loudly, that you WOULD have made money ('beat the Street') if only the terrible thing hadn't happened. Investors sigh, and your stock gets hit, but usually not that badly. Then, later on, you take some of the money out of the Rainy Day Fund to make a quarter that's not doing so well.

    That's exactly what they did here. They set aside THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS to take care of the 'Hot Coffee' problem. This quarter, they announced that the problem wasn't as bad as they thought, so they 'unreserved' eight million dollars...enough to mitigate the damage, so they don't look quite so much like a sucking chest wound.

    This is totally an accounting game. By now, they know how much damage Hot Coffee did. They could unreserve all but a million or so... that should be more than enough to handle any additional returns and/or pay for any lawsuits. They didn't do that, because they want to be able to 'beat the Street' in some later quarter, and artificially drive up the stock price.

    Investing is EXTREMELY risky if you don't know accounting. Accounting is the language of business, and companies are very good at whitewashing a rotten infrastructure.... only if you 'speak' accounting (or pay someone who does), can you be sure they're on the level.

    There are very, very few trustworthy, accurate analysts. When was the last time you saw a 'sell' on ANYTHING?