Activision Blizzard raises full year outlooks as Q1 revenue beats expectations

Activision Blizzard had a solid Q1, so much so that the company has raised its forecasts for the full year as a result.

Going into the second second quarter of the year, Activision Blizzard notes that a combination of Call of Duty’s recent triumphs and increased engagement as more and more people are kept home due to the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing stay-at-home orders.

During the first three months of the year, Activision Blizzard calls out brands like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and King’s Candy Crush franchise for standout performance during the quarter. Call of Duty in particular received its fair share of nods, with its free-to-play Warzone offshoot hitting over 60 million players in under a month and Modern Warfare setting a non-launch quarter sell-through record for the franchise.

For the quarter ending March 31, 2020, Activision Blizzard reported $1.7 billion in net revenue (GAAP). While that still makes for a decrease of $37 million year-over-year, Q1’s net revenue managed to beat Activision Blizzard’s previous forecast for the quarter by a good $148 million.

As tends to be the case, most of that revenue came from digital sources: $1.44 billion of Q1’s net revenue came from digital channels, up from $1.39 billion during the same period last year. It’s a similar story for net bookings, or net revenue excluding deferred income from certain online transactions like subscriptions. This year, Q1 net bookings came in as $1.52 billion, with $1.36 of that being digital and both improvements over the same metrics from Q1 2019.

Looking forward, Activision Blizzard expects to see net revenue around $1.69 billion for Q2, while it now expects the full year to bring in net revenue in the vicinity of $6.8 billion.