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Take-Two’s financial guidance for the current fiscal, year ending March 31, 2013, implies that Grand Theft Auto V is on schedule to release before next April.
At least it is according to Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter and Cowen & Company analyst Doug Creutz. The latter posted in a research note:
“Full year FY13 guidance for net revenues of $1.75B-$1.85B and fully diluted EPS of $2.00-$2.25 were also essentially in line with our expectations. Most importantly, the EPS range was relatively unchanged from guidance for EPS “in excess of $2.00 per diluted share” which management first provided on its Q3:F12 call.”
“We believe management could not provide this level of guidance with any degree of confidence if it did not anticipate shipping Grand Theft Auto V during FY13.”
“Take-Two’s announced line up of titles for FY13 was largely unchanged, including continuing to resist announcing a release date for Grand Theft Auto V… We are modelling a ship date for Grand Theft Auto V in the last two weeks of March 2013.”
Pachter appears to strongly agree with Creutz, writing in his own research note:
“Guidance strongly implies the release of Grand Theft Auto V in FY:13. Although management did not provide a release date or window for GTA V, its FY:13 revenue guidance is unattainable without a huge seller from Rockstar.”
“Management disclosed that the FY:13 revenue mix by label is estimated to be 60% Rockstar Games and 40% 2K Games. Rockstar is expected to contribute ≈ $1.1 billion, with ≈ $300 million from Max Payne (including DLC) and ≈ $150 million from catalog. The remaining ≈ $650 million is simply not possible without the release of GTA V well before FY end.”
“Also, we believe that the game’s developers are unlikely to risk delay very far into CY 2013 and face declining current-generation software sales in the face of the potential introduction of next-generation consoles that year or the next.”
The popular consensus at the moment is that GTA V will release at some point towards the end of this year, somewhere around October. Based on these figures it’s hard to dispute that fact, there’s an awful lot of expected income unaccounted for. October seems the most realistic window for release, especially for it to hit these sorts of sales figures, also with Bioshock being delayed Rockstar now has a clear run.
Info @ http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/...re-april-2013/