Take-Two Taken Higher by EPS Beat, Bullish View

Shares of Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ:TTWO) jumped more than 7% Friday morning after the video-game publisher impressed Wall Street with surging game sales and an upbeat outlook.

After Thursday’s close, the New York-based maker of “NBA 2K11” and “Grand Theft Auto” said it earned $54.2 million, or 58 cents a share. A year earlier it posted a loss of $7.9 million, or 10 cents a share.

Excluding one-time items, it earned 67 cents a share. Analysts had been calling for EPS of just 31 cents.

Fiscal fourth-quarter revenue soared 32% to $373.7 million, easily trumping the $325.2 million that Wall Street had been anticipating.

Take-Two also issued bullish guidance, calling for first-quarter non-GAAP EPS of 25 cents to 35 cents on sales of $290 million to $315 million, compared with estimates for a loss of 4 cents on revenue of $208 million.

For the fiscal year, it projected non-GAAP EPS of 50 cents to 65 cents on revenue of $1 billion to $1.1 billion.

“As we finish 2010, our company is better positioned for success than ever, creatively, operationally and financially,” Chairman Strauss Zelnick said in a statement. “We plan to build on the talents of our world-class creative team to deliver an increasingly diverse portfolio of high-quality titles.”

Take-Two’s stock rallied 6.75% to $12.82 Friday morning, putting it on track for a 2010 gain of nearly 20%.