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Vivendi three-month revs rise 6% to $8.8 billion

Tom Magrino
By Tom Magrino

Activision Blizzard parent company calls out game publisher as major contributor to 14.1% Q1 profit growth.

Activision Blizzard has come under fire over the past couple of months, in large part due to its handling of Infinity Ward and the Call of Duty franchise. However, detractors have not been able to argue with the publisher's financial performance. Last week, Activision Blizzard announced that it had cruised past first-quarter expectations, doubling profit to $381 million and posting revenues up 33 percent to $1.3 billion.

Modern Warfare 2 has been lending Activision more than just a helping hand.

Modern Warfare 2 has been lending Activision more than just a helping hand.

Today, Activision Blizzard parent company Vivendi SA announced its earnings for the same January-March period, and the game publisher represented the fastest growing segment in the French media conglomerate's business. Company-wide net revenue for the period reached €6.924 billion ($8.8 billion), a 6 percent increase from a year prior. Profit saw even better gains, rising 14.1 percent to €1.6 billion ($2.04 billion).

The game publisher's strong performance went a long way toward ameliorating declines in Vivendi's Universal Music Group. The segment saw revenues slip 12.6 percent to €889 million ($1.13 billion) during the three-month period, while profit fell 38.2 percent to €68 million ($86.6 million). Vivendi attributed the decline to decreased demand for physical music products, as well as fewer significant local and international releases.

Also driving gains for the media conglomerate was its French mobile phone segment SFR. By itself, SFR saw sales of €3.085 billion ($3.93 billion) from January-March, a 1.9 percent increase, while profit rose 2.6 percent to €985 million ($1.25 billion).

Other divisions within Vivendi include the Maroc Telecom, a Moroccan telecommunications company; Brazilian telecom GVT; and French TV and film studio Canal+.

Tom Magrino
By Tom Magrino

Tom Magrino has covered the games industry since 2006. He's been compared to Steve Martin by Ozzy Osbourne and Daniel Craig by Tim Schafer. His voice, heard largely on GameSpot's podcast, recalls that of Kermit the Frog. It ain't easy bein' Magreen.

16 comments
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thechamp69
thechamp69

I have about 90 shares of ATVI that I bought around $12 about two years ago... My first investment. Can't wait for this baby to pick back up. Saw a 3% increase today...

Pete5506
Pete5506

Good to read, but man that is a lot of money

lamprey263
lamprey263

I wonder how much of that money was due to withholding of royalty payments and milestone bonuses and intellectual property rights to the IW staff.

KBFTodd
KBFTodd

Nice....I play Wow, MW, and MW2 so how about some love back?

endocrine
endocrine

@fkbwii I would not say never, there are many ex-giant game companies that have been relegated to the sidelines. Sierra is gone. Almost every game from the 80's and early 90's had Sierra's name on it. Sid Meier's studio is gone. Sure his franchises live on with 2k games, but considering what his influence used to be, it is pretty much nothing now. While I bet Activision will be around for a while, if they keep destroying development studios, no startups will want to work with them. If Activision and Bungie get in to huge legal battles in the future (at the rate Activision is going it is almost a given), the only thing Activision will have left is in-house publishing (that and Blizzard to mooch off of). I remember that everyday people used to be like screw EA; now that EA is number 2 on the list, their press coverage has dropped significantly.

Ghoulish_Visage
Ghoulish_Visage

@ dstv Not quite, last game I bought from Acti was Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. And then they closed Troika.

uberjannie
uberjannie

Vivendi is king of the cash-pile xD

dstv
dstv

lol... everyone claims to hate activision yet they still support them by buying games they publish and DLC like the stimulus package

lazycomplife
lazycomplife

I confirm this statement with the shares I own in this company. I don't like the games so much, but I like profiting off of the great marketing they do.

fkbwii
fkbwii

Activision will never fall, as much as we all want it too. The now have Bungie and they will continue to work with Blizzard

kris9031998
kris9031998

@thedirtyleg Agreed im pre-ordering it (im korean)

kdawg88
kdawg88

Lol they've used that screenshot in so many articles...

thedirtyleg
thedirtyleg

Let's see how they do in the third quarter (typically slow because of summer) with Starcraft 2 coming out July 27th. South Korea will probably declare a national holiday, and blizzard execs HAVE to be licking their chops.

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