Activision Raises Forecasts On Strong Christmas Sales

After experiencing better than expected sales over the Christmas period, officials from Activision have announced that the company is raising its forecasts for the third fiscal quarter, ending December 31. For the third quarter, the company now expects record earnings per diluted share of $0.55 on net revenues of $615 million, an increase from the company's previous estimates of $0.49 per diluted share on net revenues of $500 million. For the full fiscal year 2005, the company expects earnings per diluted share of $0.81 on net revenues of $1.265 billion, an increase from $948 million last year. Chairman and CEO Robert Kotick commented: "Our holiday releases and catalogue titles continue to perform well worldwide on all major platforms, and we now have nine games that have shipped in excess of one million units." He continued: "According to NPD Funworld, Tony Hawk's Underground 2 was the #4 best-selling game in aggregate across all platforms and X-Men Legends was the #8 best-selling game in aggregate across all platforms for the months of October and November combined in the U.S. Additionally, Spider-Man 2 for the Nintendo DS was the #1 best-selling third-party title and Call of Duty: Finest Hour was the #10 best-selling game across all platforms for the month of November."