Take-Two reports Q3 profit on GTA IV

Games publisher boosts annual sales forecast

By Danny King -- Video Business, 9/4/2008

SEPT. 4 | Take-Two Interactive Software reported a fiscal third-quarter profit, as the videogames publisher's latest release in the record-setting Grand Theft Auto franchise helped fuel a booming U.S. videogames market.

Take-Two's net income for the quarter ended July 31 was $51.8 million, or 67¢ a share, compared with a loss of $58.5 million, or 81¢, a year earlier, the company said in a statement today. Sales doubled to $433.8 million.

Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto IV, which set one-day and first-week all-time records for videogames after its April 29 release has moved more than 10 million copies as of Aug. 16, the company said. That helped boost U.S. hardware and software sales through the end of July by 35% from a year earlier, to $9.47 billion, according to NPD Group. July's software sales surged 41%, to $591.1 million, NPD said.

"We are benefiting from a portfolio that is the strongest in our company's history, as well as one of the most valuable in our industry," Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said in the statement.

The company forecast that sales for the fiscal year ending Oct. 31 will be $1.55 billion, up from its June forecast of as much as $1.5 billion. Analysts expected fiscal third-quarter earnings of 54¢ a share on $381.3 million in sales.

Take-Two has been the subject of an acquisition bid from larger competitor Electronic Arts, which first offered about $2 billion for the company in February. EA, which was overtaken as the world’s largest videogames publisher in July when Vivendi's games unit completed its $9.85 billion acquisition of Activision, said last month that it would let its Take-Two bid expire.