Take-Two Beats on Latest Quarterly Earnings; CEO Remains Mum on GTA 6 Release Date but T

Posted by Aldo Pusey on Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Take-Two Interactive revealed a beat on its latest quarterly earnings results Thursday, but no news regarding an exact release date for “Grand Theft Auto 6.”

After announcing during its May earnings call that its highly anticipated Rockstar Games title was targeting a fall 2025 launch, Take-Two did not narrow that window down further this quarter. And as to whether the video game company will reveal the date in its next quarterly check in this fall, CEO Strauss Zelnick told Variety, “I guess we’ll see.”

Wall Street forecast a loss of earnings per share (EPS) of 2 cents on $1.25 billion in net bookings for Take-Two’s Q2, according to analyst consensus data provided by LSEG, formerly Refinitiv. Take-Two reported non-GAAP EPS of 5 cents on $1.22 billion in net bookings.

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Net loss for the quarter was $262 million.

These results do not yet showcase the full impact of Take-Two’s acquisition of “Borderlands” developer Gearbox, a transaction that closed in June.

“It’s so far de minimis because we have, of course, the results of their primary titles in our numbers already, because we publish those titles already, and we only close the deal in June,” Zelnick said in an interview ahead of the release of the financial results. “But we do expect it’ll be a very lucrative deal.”

Those predictions aren’t based on Take-Two’s hopes for the “Borderlands” movie releasing Friday, which is shaping up to misfire with $12 million to $16 million in its first weekend of release on a production budget of roughly $115 million as well as marketing and distribution costs of $30 million.

When asked about any expected revenue from the film, Zelnick said: “I’ve said all along that the value of those licenses is typically not all that significant, even in great success.”

Take-Two was not immune to the wave of cost-reductions that hit gaming companies earlier this year, laying off 5% of its workforce and scrapping several games. Currently, Zelnick foresees no additional cuts.

“We’ve made all of our decisions and announced them, and mostly to date, those decisions have been executed,” Zelnick said. “There are some remaining moves that still have to occur, but they’ve already been identified and announced.”

On an earnings call later Thursday, Zelnick spoke about the SAG-AFTRA strike against major video game studios, including Take 2 Productions, noting “we deeply value our talent relationships and historically, we’ve worked very successfully with all of the unions.”

“We continue to work hard to come to a resolution on this current situation,” the Take-Two CEO said. “In fact, we’ve found common ground on 24 out of 25 proposals. So I’m pretty confident that we can get to a deal that will be mutually beneficial. At the same time, we don’t expect any impact whatsoever on our titles that are in development. If the strike went on for a very long time, obviously, that would affect us, and that wouldn’t be a good for us or for the industry. But we’re cautiously optimistic that we’ll be able to find common ground, and that’s certainly our goal.”

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