Earnings Labs

Electronic Arts Inc. (EA)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Tue, May 10, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Jennifer, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Electronic Arts fourth quarter 2016 earnings call. At this time, all lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks there will be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. And I'll now turn the conference over to Chris Evenden, Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Chris Evenden - VP, Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Jennifer. Welcome to EA's fiscal 2016 fourth quarter earnings call. With me on the call today are Andrew Wilson, our CEO and Blake Jorgensen, our CFO. Please note that our SEC filings and our earnings release are available at ir.ea.com. In addition, we have posted earnings slides to accompany our prepared remarks. After the call, we will post our prepared remarks, an audio replay of this call, and a transcript. A couple of quick notes on our calendar. We plan to deliver our next earnings report on Tuesday, August 2. And our press conference at EA Play will take place at 1:00 PM Pacific Time on Sunday, June 12. Coming up next week, on Tuesday, May 17, is our Investor Day. If you haven't registered already, please contact me so that we can send you an invitation. This presentation and our comments include forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company. Actual events and results may differ materially from our expectations. We refer you to our most recent Form 10-Q for a discussion of risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. Electronic Arts makes these statements as of today, May 10, 2016 and disclaims any duty to update them. During this call unless otherwise stated, the financial metrics will be presented on a non-GAAP basis. Our earnings release and the earnings slides provide a reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP measures. These non-GAAP measures are not intended to be considered in isolation from, as a substitute for, or superior to our GAAP results. We encourage investors to consider all measures before making an investment decision. All comparisons made in the course of this call are against the same period in the prior year, unless otherwise stated. Now,…

Operator

Operator

And our first question comes from the line of Justin Post with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Justin Post - Bank of America-Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Great, thank you for taking my question, two questions. Can you talk about your investment this year and your guidance for the action adventure titles, and could we see something as soon as fiscal 2018 on that front? And then a large competitor, maybe this is for Andrew, has talked a lot about eSports. And how do you see that opportunity for your first-person shooters and also your big sports titles? Thank you. Blake J. Jorgensen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So, Justin, thanks for the question. Why don't I start with the investment piece? We're making broad investments that fuel the growth of the company well beyond fiscal 2018 and 2019. Really today we're building an action genre product that's probably in our fiscal 2020 or 2021, as well as action-oriented games around the Star Wars genre. Most of what we're investing in that's incremental now probably comes in fiscal 2019 and 2020. But clearly, some of our investment is to grow out our product base for what we're going on as well. We do have a new IP coming next year. We haven't yet announced it, but it's something that you'll see probably coming up soon. And clearly that's part of our investment for the franchise, as well as continuing building out the Battlefront franchise with Star Wars for fiscal 2018 as well. Andrew P. Wilson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: As it relates to competitive gaming, Peter Moore, our Head of our Competitive Gaming Group, is going to deliver a lot more in terms of understanding at our upcoming Investor Day. The group overall is focused on enabling global communities through great games. So this absolutely includes the elite division, but we also believe there is an opportunity to celebrate the talent and skill at every level of game play. So for some, that will mean elite play. For others, that will just mean the joy of competition with friends, and we believe there is going to be a robust community and resulting engagement that we can build as a result of that.

Justin Post - Bank of America-Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

And your next question is from Chris Merwin with Barclays.

Christopher David Merwin - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays

All right, great. Thank you. I just had a couple questions. So first of all, on extra content, that reaccelerated really nicely in the fiscal fourth quarter. So I was wondering if you could provide a bit more color about what drove the improvement there. I think you called out mid-20% in constant currency growth for Ultimate Team, but I was also curious what lift you got from the Star Wars DLC as well. And then just a second question on non-GAAP gross margins. I think you got about 100 basis points of margin expansion year on year, which is consistent with the long-term guidance, but I just was curious what that assumed for digital downloads as a percentage of total for the year and how the download patterns for Battlefield One might differ from Star Wars Battlefront. Thanks. Blake J. Jorgensen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So extra content obviously was dominated by Ultimate Team, but also FIFA Online 3 in Asia continues to grow, which falls in that. We saw continued growth of our original Star Wars product, Star Wars: The Old Republic, as well as extra content associated with The Sims, with Battlefield 4, and obviously the start of the Battlefront extra content. The bulk of that, though, is on components I just mentioned that really drove outsized performance in the quarter for extra content. In terms of guidance going forward, assumptions around full game downloads, we assume that we're continually going to see growth that we saw like in the past year. Industry now is above 30%, I think it's reaching 32%. And we're fairly consistent with that, with some titles as we mentioned in the script that are well north of that. Gen 4 Madden, for example, was well north of 50% when you look at a full-year number. So you're starting to see dramatic movements there. We should see greater improvement next year because we won't have the skewing towards physical that we saw in the Battlefront gift giving that we saw around the holiday and we mentioned in our last quarter. And that forecast has driven what we're seeing in our uptick, about 110% in gross margin growth year over year.

Christopher David Merwin - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst · Barclays

Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

And your next question is from Stephen Ju with Credit Suisse. Stephen Ju - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Thanks. So, Andrew, I'm looking at the proposed release slate for 2017. I think you have Titanfall launching alongside Battlefield and NBA launching during the basketball season? So obviously this brings up concerns around cannibalization and mistiming, so I'm wondering if you can offer some additional perspective there. And also what do you think the underlying factors were that drove success for Madden Mobile and Galaxy of Heroes, and how much of this can be replicated in your other mobile sports or action releases? Thanks. Andrew P. Wilson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: So in terms of the Titanfall, Battlefield One question, this is a giant category in our industry, $4.5 billion category. There is a very broad and diverse set of players who play games in that category who are looking for – to fulfill different game play motivations. Some people play very quick play, some people more strategic play, and some people want both in different context. The result of those, we feel like we actually have a really strong position to deliver the broadest set of game play mechanics as it relates to first-person shooter genre across the two titles, and feel very confident that we are well-positioned to do very well in that category in a year. Certainly as you see, the reception around Battlefield 1 we feel very good about that. The energy around Titanfall 2 is also building very nicely, and we look forward to showing more of both of those titles at EA Play in June. As it relates to Madden Mobile and Galaxy of Heroes, there is really a couple of things that we believe we are in a place to…

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Colin Sebastian with Robert W. Baird. Colin A. Sebastian - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Thanks and congratulations on another good quarter. I have a couple of questions. First one to ask, follow-up on Battlefield 1 and the selection of World War I as the background setting. On one hand, this sounds quite intriguing and we know that the World War II genres in the past did quite well. So notwithstanding that, the initial reception sounds very positive here. I wonder what your consumer testing says about the appeal of this historical event in a genre that's been dominated by futuristic backdrops, and then I have one follow-up. Andrew P. Wilson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, I think it's a great question and certainly one that we've been asked a number of times. When the teams set out to deliver the next version of Battlefield, they wanted to do a lot of things with the game. They wanted to be the biggest Battlefield game. They wanted to be the most diverse Battlefield game. They wanted fundamentally new game play mechanics with evolution of story, interwoven characters, storylines, evolution of machinery, evolution of weaponry, a real opportunity to build and grow inside of a Battlefield universe. When I took a step back and asked themselves what was the best place to set a game that had that kind of ambition, World War I was really the only place to do it. And what very few people remember from their history classes, I guess, is that people rode into World War I on horses and came out on planes and tanks and submarines. And we think that level of innovation and evolution of battle in a short period of time gives us a…

Operator

Operator

And your next question is from Brian Pitz with Jefferies.

Brian J. Pitz - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies

Thanks so much. One more on Battlefield. It's getting very positive reception on YouTube and other online forums so far to date. We don't actually recall such strong early interest in the franchise. Are there other internal metrics that you would provide to give us confidence that this game is truly tracking ahead of the previous versions? Thanks. Andrew P. Wilson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. And, again, we have been delighted with the reception. It's our most liked trailer to date. And depending on what metrics you look at from YouTube, it may be the most liked trailer ever on YouTube. We see that as a real positive sign for the franchise. The community has been asking for innovation, the community has been asking for something different. And our DICE team did step out and build something truly epic and respond to the community's demands. And their feedback has been resoundingly positive. As it relates to how the game is tracking, the game is doing really, really well. We recently had key franchise reviews where more of the game is playable at this stage than has ever been in the case in Battlefield before. The Frostbite engine is robust in its foundation and this is a very tried and true team who build unbelievable experiences. And so we have deep confidence in them to execute against their ambition. And we look forward to demonstrating more of that at EA Play in June. Blake J. Jorgensen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And like most of our large titles, you'll tend to see more and more during this summer, at Gamescom late in the summertime. Most likely some further game play either in the form of a beta or something to that extent. So you'll have plenty of ways to better understand the depth of the product and excitement around the product as the next few months come by. And we'll try to keep you informed in our next earnings call on how we see the demand developing for the product.

Brian J. Pitz - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Jefferies

Great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Arvind Bhatia with Sterne Agee.

Arvind Bhatia - Sterne Agee CRT

Analyst · Sterne Agee

Thank you. Great quarter, guys. I was wondering if you could talk about Titanfall 2 a little bit and how we should think about the title relative to its predecessor in terms of units perhaps. Obviously the previous one was very successful, but it had some unique circumstances. It wasn't on all-platforms, but I know it had a high attach rate as being one of the key early titles. So if you could just put that in perspective. Thank you. Blake J. Jorgensen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Clearly, we're very excited about it. We've seen it a couple of times over the last few months, and it's well along the way. And it has evolved substantially from the first Titanfall. First Titanfall was fantastic. This has added a whole new level to the game and the experience. It will be on both platforms, which obviously means, a bigger audience for Titanfall, particularly with the Sony platform is the one that hasn't experienced it. So they'll get a chance to experience the game. But at the same time, obviously the attach won't be anywhere near as high as it was, because it was one of the first AAA titles for the new Xbox One. And so obviously a lower attach. We think you're going to see numbers clearly larger than our Titanfall 1 franchise. And we've got good expectations for it, but we've tried to be prudent in how we forecast that in our guidance.

Arvind Bhatia - Sterne Agee CRT

Analyst · Sterne Agee

Great. Thank you, guys. Good luck.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Michael Olson with Piper Jaffray. Mike J. Olson - Piper Jaffray & Co. (Broker): Hey, good afternoon. I had a couple questions if I could. First you might dive into this at the Analyst Day but in addition to continued mix shift towards full game downloads and digital add-on content, how do you think about the evolution of revenue mix over the next few years related to subscription, free-to-play, et cetera? I guess should we anticipate much of a change or will it be kind of primarily a continuation of growth in full game downloads and add-on content that we're seeing today? And then second, regarding past comments that you've made on revenue growth consistency, how disciplined do you plan to be on keeping revenue growth in the single digits? In other words, if it appears that it could be tracking towards double digits part way through the year, would you push titles into fiscal 2018 in order to manage the growth rate? Thanks. Blake J. Jorgensen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So on the first piece, I think we will continue to see subscriptions grow, particularly with EA Access and the strength of that product. And obviously based on the strength of that, we rolled out Origin Access, which is our Origin-based PC-based gaming with a similar structure as EA Access. We'll continue to push that. We think subscriptions are an important part of the future of this business, and you'll see that continue to grow. In the past, remember, we've had some accounting differences between products where something that looks like DLC might have been booked as a subscription because it was a series of DLCs over time, and that's what's made the subscription number go up and down over…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Drew Crum with Stifel Nicolaus. Drew Crum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay, thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. So the guidance for OpEx this year is $2.1 billion. You ran through the details behind that. Is that a new normal or the run rate we should expect beyond fiscal 2017? Blake J. Jorgensen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: It's probably in that zone. It could be plus or minus $25 million or $30 million. I remind people there are a couple components to that. One is our marketing and sales. We've tried to target that number between 12% and 13% of revenue. So obviously in a bigger revenue year like this year, we're going to spend more on marketing and sales to support things like Battlefield and Titanfall. So that's going to see a flux up and down based on the revenue component. Our R&D expenses we've tried to target around 21% to 22% of revenue, and we're tracking around that level now. And we feel like there's a huge opportunity for us to continue to invest in new areas of the business like the action genre where we haven't competed historically. It's a very ripe opportunity for us. And we've been able to bring great talent in to try to build out that part of the business. Our mobile areas with new studios coming on has also been important for us, and we'll continue to invest there. And then last but not least, continuing to build out the platform in which we operate all our games on and we're trying to leverage through that network will continue to be a key part of our investment. So you'll probably see that rough level as a percentage of sales be the focus going…

Chris Evenden - VP, Investor Relations

Management

Operator, next question, please.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Ben Schachter from Macquarie Research. Benjamin Schachter - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: Hey, guys, congratulations on a great year. On the full-game downloads, is there anything you guys are going to do to try to increase it via discounts or other promotions, or are you pretty happy to see it grow organically? And then also, if you're already over 30%, where do you think that number will be in FY 2017 in the next two years? And then separately, on Battlefield 1, any notable increases in in-game monetization, or will it be continued more maps and those kind of things? Thanks. Blake J. Jorgensen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So let me take the first one and then I'll have Andrew talk a little bit about Battlefield. It's a difficult prediction. We know that PCs took about eight years to go from zero to 75% in full-game downloads, but there are a lot of differences between the PC business and the console business. We do know that the consumer is very interested in convenience, and we want to have product wherever the consumer wants to shop, be it a retail store or a console. We obviously have great partners in retail and we want to continue to have great partners over time, and so we will support them with great in-store merchandise and training and support. And at the same time try to help educate our console partners as well on how to best market the products digitally. Our best guess today is that growth continues at about the pace that it has over the last couple of years since Gen 4 consoles were rolled out. So could we see another 5% pop, meaning going from say the high-20%s to the mid-30%s?…

Operator

Operator

And your next question comes from Mike Hickey with The Benchmark Company.

Michael Hickey - The Benchmark Co. LLC

Analyst · The Benchmark Company

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my questions. Great quarter. Blake, you gave 25 million units growth for, I think, calendar year 2016. I'm curious if your assumptions, if you were expecting ease of new consoles this year, any price cuts of existing hardware? Or maybe any other sort of key considerations to that estimate? And then, I realize obviously you can't announce any new hardware plans from your partners, but there has been sort of wide speculation that you have a mid-cycle upgrade coming. And I was curious if you could sort of shape for us why a mid-cycle upgrade could be positive for the industry. And also if there is any potential development expense to developing games in 4K. Thanks guys. Blake J. Jorgensen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I can't tell you a lot about what Microsoft or Sony or other console makers plans are. I think we've all seen some of the discounting that's been going on in the industry both through the holidays and post holidays. And there is continued aggressive bundling across the industry. And I think all of that acts to continue to drive people into consoles. I think the other thing that's important to remember is there are very few Gen 3 titles being still made. Most of the new titles that we're talking about as well as the industry is talking about are Gen 4-only, and that is a – will clearly start to push people to ultimately buy a new console if they've resisted, because they've had a choice to play a game on either Gen 4 or Gen 4. In terms of any mid-cycle upgrades, once again I can't predict. But what I can tell you is that what was heard I think publicly from the console…

Michael Hickey - The Benchmark Co. LLC

Analyst · The Benchmark Company

All right, thanks, Blake. Best of luck, guys. Blake J. Jorgensen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thanks.

Operator

Operator

And your next question is from Neil Doshi with Mizuho Securities.

Neil A. Doshi - Mizuho Securities USA, Inc.

Analyst · Mizuho Securities

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. First, on mobile, we've seen a couple of quarters of very strong mid-teens year-over-year growth. Is the plan there really to focus around the core AAA titles and develop the mobile ecosystem around those games, or can we see some original IP on the mobile front? And then, secondly, with the fairly healthy cash balance, Blake, how do you think about M&A as another way of putting that cash to use? Thanks. Andrew P. Wilson - Chief Executive Officer & Director: As it relates to mobile, again, when you have the benefit of the depth and breadth of our portfolio of great brands and IP, in a world where discovery is becoming challenged and the mobile market is increasingly fought with competition, utilization of those brands is certainly a great strength for us. And as you heard us in our prepared comments, we had the most installs of any publisher in calendar year 2015, and a lot of that is driven around the recognition of our brand and our IP and the quality experiences that come as part of those brands. As we look forward, certainly you will see more great experience from us that are based around the depth and breadth of our IP portfolio, but at the same time, like in our console business and our PC business, we also look at opportunities to develop new IP in the space, and so you would expect from us in the future a balanced approach to the marketplace, but certainly, we're not turning our back on our existing portfolio. Blake J. Jorgensen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: In terms of M&A, I think over the last three years, we've gone through quite a transformation as a company, and three years ago…

Operator

Operator

Thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's conference call and you may now disconnect.