Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI) is set to report third quarter earnings on Tuesday, November 4 after the market closes. The gaming industry has been on fire this season and analysts on Estimize are predicting that Activision Blizzard will announce much more attractive results than Wall Street is forecasting.
One title in particular is expected to do much of the heavy lifting this quarter. On September 9, three weeks before the end of the fiscal quarter, Activision Publishing released Destiny, a game made in partnership with the studio that produced the Halo franchise, Bungie.
Destiny did over $500 million in sales on day 1, making it a blockbuster launch and instantly among the most valuable franchises across the industry.
However, not all the spoils go to Activision Blizzard. Destiny was produced by Bungie and the intellectual property remains under Bungie’s control. Either way, publishing the game is still a huge win for ATVI.
So far this has been a great earnings season for the large video game producers. Last week Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA) reported profits of 75 cents per share compared to the Estimize consensus of 55 cents while the Street was at 53 cents. Take Two Interactive Software (NASDAQ:TTWO) also beat expectations losing only 44 cents per share while the Estimize community forecast -46 cents and Wall Street was at -48 cents.
Analysts on Estimize and Wall Street are both expecting a huge uptick in Activision Blizzard’s 3rd fsical quarter, although the Estimize community is significantly more bullish on the bottom line than the Street is.
Activision Blizzard owns a slew of recognizable franchises that have been great performers over the past decade including Call of Duty, Warcraft, and Diablo.
An expansion for Diablo 3 on Sony Playstation and Microsoft Xbox consoles was also released this quarter which is expected to be a hit. World of Warcraft will continue to be a steady stream of income for ATVI and relatively young freemium virtual trading card game, Hearthstone, has also been a tremendous success on desktop and tablet.
As of the time of writing this piece Activision Blizzard has 4 of the top 10 most popular games on online streaming platform Twitch TV which was purchased by Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) for $970 million this summer. Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and HearthStone are both in the top 3 right now each with over 90,000 concurrent viewers.
These games are just one way to indicate how popular ATVI’s titles are with online audiences, and Twitch viewership could serve as a proxy for the lucrative earnings release which might be around the corner. Destiny isn’t the type of game that would amass a viewership on Twitch, but it should still be a huge catalyst for Activision Blizzard’s quarter.