Gameloft: Sales of €167.0 Million for the First Nine Months of 2014, Up 4% on a Constant-Exchange-Rate Basis

PARIS, November 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Today, Gameloft, a leading digital and social game developer and publisher, released its sales figures for the nine months ended September 30, 2014.

"After several quarters with a low number of releases, Gameloft has returned to launching new games at a more regular pace. While this is not yet apparent in the quarterly sales, we believe it will progressively start showing in the coming quarters and accelerate throughout 2015," stated Michel Guillemot, CEO of Gameloft. "In the meantime, the ongoing traction of our back catalogue has allowed our revenue to continue to grow on a like-for-like basis in the first nine months of 2014 despite significant headwinds. This strong performance from the back catalogue in a very competitive environment is due to our efficient update strategy along withthequality and diversity of our product portfolio. Although we would like to be further along, we believe we have made the right decisions by reducing our time to market, progressively changing our product mix towards more mid-core and female oriented games and focusing on improving monetization and by doing so we believe we havepositioned the company for growth in the coming years."    

Selected Financial Highlights and Metrics 

• Nine-month sales of €167.0 million, down 2% year on year, and up 4% on a constant-exchange-rate basis.
• Back catalogue games accounted for 92% of first-nine-month sales, up 10% year on year.
• EMEA was 32% of first-nine-month sales; North America, 29%; APAC, 21%; and LATAM, 18%.
• Q3 sales of €55.8 million in the third quarter of 2014, down 10% year on year, and down 8% on a constant-exchange-rate basis.
• Monthly active users averaged 164 million in Q3.
• Daily active users averaged 20 million in Q3.

Selected Product Highlights 

• Gameloft was the worldwide #1 developer and publisher on iOS and Google Play in Q3 by downloads according to App Annie's worldwide index for games.
• Gameloft released as planned five new titles from July to the beginning of October: Modern Combat 5: Blackout, Ice Age Adventures™, Spider-Man® Unlimited, AsphaltOverdrive™, Cars®: Fast as Lightning. Of those five games four of them were featured as Editor's Choice, or its equivalent, on Apple's App Store, Google Play or Windows Store.
• Spider-Man Unlimited was the second most downloaded game worldwide on iOS and Google Play in September.
• More than 12 months post launch, Despicable Me®: Minion Rush was the fourth most downloaded game on iOS and Google Play in August, following a major update introducing the "Jelly Map".
• Asphalt®8: Airborne, released in August 2013, returned to the top iOS game charts by downloads in September, coinciding with two substantial updates that introduced multiplayer events and expanded the game's pioneering Twitch livestream broadcasting functionality.

Financial and Business Outlook 

Given the challenging current trading conditions and the level of Q3 sales, reaching the full-year sales target of close to €245.0 million will be highly dependent on the success of the company's fourth-quarter game releases. Current operating expenses are expected to reach around €230.0 million.

As planned, Gameloft will have launched between twelve to fifteen games in 2014 and expects to increase the number of yearly releases to twenty games starting 2015, which should help drive future revenues. "With major advertising companies now switching a larger part of their budgets to mobile and with Gameloft being the leading publisher by downloads,we also expect our advertising revenues to rebound significantlyin 2015," added Michel Guillemot.

The Group's annual sales will be published on January 28, 2015, after the market closes.

About Gameloft 

A leading publisher of digital and social games, Gameloft® has established itself as one of the top innovators in its field since 2000. Gameloft creates games for all digital platforms, including feature phones, smartphones, tablets (including Apple® iOS, Android® and Windows® devices) , set-top boxes and connected TVs. Gameloft operates its own established franchises such as Asphalt®, Order & Chaos Modern Combat or Dungeon Hunter and also partners with major rights holders including Universal, Illumination Entertainment, Disney®, Marvel®, Hasbro®, Fox Digital Entertainment , Mattel® and Ferrari®. Gameloft is present on all continents, distributes its games in over 100 countries and employs over 5,200 developers.

Gameloft is listed on NYSE Euronext Paris (NYSE Euronext: GFT.PA, Bloomberg: GFT FP, Reuters: GLFT.PA). Gameloft's sponsored Level 1 ADR (ticker: GLOFY) is traded OTC in the US.

For more information, consult http://www.gameloft.com.

SOURCE Gameloft