Strong Growth of the Advertising Business
Paris (France), April 28, 2016 – Gameloft, a leading digital and social game developer, releases its sales figures for the first quarter ended March 31, 2016.
“The company’s growth dynamic maintained satisfactory levels over the first quarter of 2016. Driven by the solid performance of sales of virtual products and the strong growth of advertising revenues, Gameloft’s sales figure increased by 5% at constant-exchange rate in the first quarter of 2016,” states Michel Guillemot, Gameloft CEO. “At the start of a new development cycle focused on programmatic advertising, Gameloft benefits from a new organizational structure that is profitable and centered on the efficiency and creativity of its development teams,” concludes Michel Guillemot.
Selected Financial Highlights and Metrics
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Q1 2016 sales reached €65.1 million, down 1% based on published data and up 5% on a constant-exchange rate.
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EMEA accounted for 32% of Q1 2016 sales; APAC, 32%; North America, 22%; and LATAM, 14%.
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Monthly active users averaged 157 million in Q1 2016.
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Daily active users averaged 19 million in Q1 2016.
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Global Advertising Solutions, Gameloft’s mobile advertising agency, achieved sales of €2.7 million in Q1 2016, compared to €0.3 million for the same period last year.
Selected Product Highlights
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Disney Magic Kingdoms, which Gameloft launched in March 2016, generated over eleven million downloads in less than two months. The game has been unanimously praised by players around the world and upon release was ranked among the top 5 most downloaded games in 76 countries on iOS and 59 countries on Android.
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Gameloft and Universal reached an agreement to renew the publishing rights of Despicable Me: Minion Rush until June 2017.
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In Q1 2016, Gameloft was ranked the #2 game developer in the world on iOS and Google Play by the combined number of games downloaded, according to the rankings from App Annie.
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Gameloft’s own franchises and brands accounted for 62% of Q1 2016 sales.
Financial and Business Outlook
On March 22, 2016, Gameloft presented its development strategy and financial outlook for 2018. The company aims to accelerate the transition from the current business model to a model combining free-to-play and advertising. To do so, Gameloft has created an internal advertising agency working in 40 markets and has connected its available inventory to 10 key players in mobile programmatic advertising. The company expects to continue expanding its network in this quarter, particularly in Asian countries. This advertising agency allows Gameloft to offer a secure, high-quality integrated platform to brands and agencies and to reach high advertising revenue per player with increasingly native formats.
Gameloft is entering a new phase of profitable growth that should allow it to target the following objectives:
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2018 sales of more than €350 million, of which 30% comes from advertising.
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Current operating profit of more than €65 million in 2018.
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Cumulative free cash flow of more than €85 million over 2016-2018.
The sales figure for Q2 2016 will be published on July 28, 2016, after the market closes.
Auditing procedures on the first quarter sales figures have not been performed.
This press release includes information about the objectives of the Group and forward-looking statements. These statements are sometimes identified by the use of the future or conditional tense, as well as terms such as “estimate”, “believe”, “have the objective of”, “intend to”, “expect”, “result in”, “should” and other similar expressions. It should be noted that the realisation of these objectives and forward-looking statements is dependent on the circumstances and facts that arise in the future. Forward-looking statements and information about objectives may be affected by known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may significantly alter the future results, performance and accomplishments planned or expected by the Company. These factors may include changes in the economic and commercial situation, regulations and the risk factors described in Gameloft's Registration Document (§2.1.7) filed with the AMF under number D.15-0405 on April 24, 2015.
This press release and the information contained herein do not constitute either an offer to sell or purchase or the solicitation of an offer to sell or purchase securities of Gameloft.
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