Take-Two Interactive Spikes 6% on Big Beat
Take-Two Interactive Software (NASDAQ:TTWO) scored a 6% rally Tuesday morning as Wall Street cheers the video-game publisher’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings beat and solid guidance.
Reporting after Monday’s closing bell, the maker of the “Grand Theft Auto” series said it earned a non-GAAP profit of 38 cents a share, blowing away consensus calls from analysts for just 23 cents. Revenue came in at $299.5 million, easily besting estimates for $280.1 million.
In response to the big beat, analysts at BMO Capital Markets (NYSE:BM) raised their price target to $20 from $16, while Macquarie boosted its target to $21 from $18.
Take-Two benefited from the March debut of BioShock Infinite, which has sold-in more than 3.7 million units so far.
Looking ahead, management forecasted fiscal 2014 non-GAAP EPS of $2.05 to $2.30 on revenue of $1.75 billion to $1.85 billion. By comparison, analysts had been calling for EPS of $2.26 on sales of $1.78 billion.
Take-Two said "Grand Theft Auto V" is due out in September, setting up fiscal 2014 to be “one of our best years ever,” CEO Strauss Zelnick said in a statement.
Zelnick also said the company expects to be profitable on a non-GAAP basis in fiscal 2015 and “for the foreseeable future.”
Shares of New York-based Take-Two soared 6.28% to $17.42 Tuesday morning, extending their 2013 surge to a whopping 58%.