Take-Two Loses $138 Million in Fiscal 2009

Earlier this month, Take-Two slashed its guidance, making investors very unhappy. Today the publisher released its fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal numbers for the period ended October 31. Q4 sales grew slightly to $343.4 million (compared to $323.4 million for the same quarter of fiscal 2008) and were driven by Borderlands, NBA 2K10, GTA: Episodes from Liberty City, GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony, and Grand Theft Auto IV. 

The bad news is that Take-Two's Q4 loss swelled from $15 million last year at this time to $22 million. Moreover, for the full year net loss totaled $137.9 million while total sales dipped from $1.54 billion to $968.5 million. On a positive note, the Carnival Games franchise from 2K Play's Cat Daddy Games studio sold over 5 million units worldwide on the Wii and DS, while Borderlands has now sold over 2 million units worldwide.

Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of Take-Two, stated, "Our company and industry experienced a very difficult economic environment in 2009. We believe that 2010 will continue to be challenging and our outlook, while disappointing, reflects a prudent approach to managing our business. The fact remains that Take-Two is in a fundamentally strong position to build long term value. We have an outstanding portfolio of hit franchises based largely on internally developed and owned intellectual property, a team of extraordinarily creative and talented people, opportunities to extend our business to new media and markets, and the financial resources to support our strategies."

Ben Feder, Chief Executive Officer of Take-Two, added, "We are excited about our product lineup for 2010, which includes BioShock 2, Mafia II, Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption. We also have just announced Spec Ops: The Line, an intense military third-person shooter, for fiscal 2011. Our broad portfolio reflects the fantastic creative assets that will be the source of our long term success. Moving forward, we plan to build our company by continuing to focus on select high-potential titles, leveraging our successful franchises and applying our creative abilities to emerging opportunities. We also intend to strengthen our business through increased cost management, improved operational efficiencies, and the timely delivery of our titles."

There's been a lot of analyst talk since Take-Two slashed its guidance. One analyst suggested that GTA may have peaked, while another took Take-Two management to task for its lack of visibility around GTA's release schedule.