Activision optimistic, increases Q3, FY 2008 guidance

Activision may have a big year ahead of them once the agreement the publisher and Vivendi signed comes to fruition, but at least they’ve got something to smile about. The company just recently made known via press wire that their financial performance is likely to exceed previous expectations, and so they’ve made the proper readjustments. More on that when you get to the full story.

In the business side of things, it appears that Activision is picking up serious slack since the company’s Q2 performance was published. The major game publisher just announced that they’ve hiked their outlook for Q3 2007 and the coming fiscal year 2008, thanks to a remarkable sales performance for the early part of Q3.

The holiday buying fever is looking favorable for Activision, whose recent games such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC) have been garnering results beyond previously laid expectations. The publisher now feels confident that its net revenue and earnings per diluted share in stock can be pinned higher than what was estimated before.

“We continue to see strong audience excitement for our products and as a result we are again raising our financial outlook for the December quarter and the fiscal year,” claimed Robert Kotick, Chairman and CEO of Activision.

Earnings per diluted share estimates for Q3 2007 are now at a high of US$ 0.76, and that already includes the costs of the recent agreement with Vivendi for Activision Blizzard. The publisher also hopes to gain a generous US$ 1.375 billion in net revenue by the end of Q3.

And for fiscal year 2008, Activision had to step up its previous estimates of US$ 0.75 earnings per diluted share to at least US$ 0.85, and the company expects to bag at least US$ 2.45 billion next year. And as such with Q3 estimates, these numbers also take into account the financing and costs of the Activision-Blizzard merger.