Tony D. Bartel
Analyst · questions on that
Thank you, Mike. As Paul shared with you earlier, the investments made in the digital space are working, and we are ahead of our digital growth forecast of 57% digital growth in 2011. We prudently invested in building blocks for the future that are growing quickly, and we avoided the allure of highly-priced technology companies. In short, we believe that we are leading our customers into the hybrid experience that enhances their enjoyment of gaming. Our growth projections for the global digital business remain at a healthy 13% CAGR through 2014, led by strong growth in downloadable content and mobile gaming. As I'll discuss later, we have invested or are investing in each digital growth area to apply our unique strength to provide consumers with a strong and compelling proposition. As we look at our progress towards our goal of $1.5 billion of digital receipts by 2014, we are ahead of schedule as our $453 million of digital receipts represented 57% growth over last year. This year, we expect our digital business to grow 50%, keeping us on pace to reach our $1.5 billion goal. As Rob shared earlier, we expect that our digital revenue will be accretive to our gross margins on a GAAP basis and will be similar to our overall margin on a non-GAAP basis. Let me detail the actions that GameStop has taken to drive growth in each digital category. In DLC, we are very confident that we are introducing and enabling new customers to enter the exciting world of expanded content. Based on the survey of customers about DLC in our stores, we found that 1/2 of them had never purchased DLC before. And when we asked them about their intent to purchase again at GameStop, 91% of these customers said that they intended to repurchase at GameStop. This was nearly double the repurchase intent of any other DLC source. In addition to the knowledge of our associates, a key reason that people purchase DLC at GameStop is due to the fact we have alternative currency sources. In fact, 70% of the currency that's used to purchase DLC in our stores is some form other than credit such as cash, gift cards and trade credits. So for these customers who are unable or unwilling to provide a credit card for an online purchase, we provide an excellent and informed choice to purchase DLC. When you look at the satisfaction of these customers, it is a very high 87%. When asked about what the top drivers of the satisfaction were, customers answered the integration with PowerUp Rewards and the knowledge of our associates, 2 factors that others find hard to replicate. Speaking of PowerUp Rewards, this is an integral part of our digital experience and an example of how it has evolved into a customer-acquisition platform. When we pre-order or pre-sell DLC, the code to activate the DLC is sent to the PowerUp Reward member's secure electronic locker at the same time that the DLC becomes available online. To show how powerful the program is when all of these elements come together, here are the results from the launch of Activision's Call of Duty: ELITE, the largest DLC launch of all time. GameStop worked closely with Activision throughout the pre-sell process and through the launch process to generate over 2/3 of the customers who purchase this DLC during the first week of launch. A more recent example is the launch of EA's Mass Effect 3, where we presold DLC alongside the game. We attached DLC to over 40% of the physical games at launch, resulting in a dominant market share for the first week of March. We are sharing this success with all of our publishing partners and are driving a maturation of the DLC business that is resulting in incremental customers and faster growth. In our online browser-based gaming space, we evolved Kongregate from a predominantly ad-based browser platform to a hybrid platform where most of our revenue is coming from in-game transactions. As a result, we more than doubled our revenue in 2011 and project that we will again double our revenue in 2012. We created a business development team focused on procuring the top free-to-play games, and we continue to evolve our platform to accommodate the needs both of core browser gamers, as well as developers of free-to-play games. Through Spawn, we have optimized our cloud-based gaming technology and are currently live nationwide in 6 data centers that are running a national beta for thousands of GameStop associates, some of the heaviest gamers in the world. The technology works, and publishers are excited about our progress. In the social gaming space, we continue to expand our assortment of POSA cards, as well as offering digital currency that we sell similarly to DLC. We are working with publishers to provide unique content to drive traffic to our stores and websites, and we will utilize our strong pre-sell and launch skills to activate these events. As in other parts of our business, the ability to use non-cash currency to drive this business is driving new lines of revenue, as well as additional traffic. In PC downloads, we continue to grow and integrate the PC app store into our stores and online, doubling our revenue in 2011. In addition, we are expanding our offerings to accommodate the needs of the hybrid customer. We now have over 1,500 games to offer customers digitally, and we will soon have all of these available for purchase in our stores. We will be launching this platform in our stores in April and expect to see a tripling of PC digital sales this year. In addition, we recently signed a deal with Blizzard Entertainment to sell digital games and in-game virtual goods and services via our PIN-on-receipt technology, similar to what we use with DLC. We now have the ability to sell, pre-order and pre-sell digital content that will be delivered at the same time that it is available online. The first game that will use this technology is Diablo III, but we are already pre-selling the digital version of the game in our stores. Again, this represents a strong partnership with Activision, as well as a corroboration of our ability to sell incremental digital content in our retail stores. In digital media, we have one of the world's largest paid digital magazines that currently boasts over 1 million paying subscribers. We continue to see growth at over 200,000 digital subscribers quarterly. And this is non-cannibalistic to our physical magazine, which is currently the fourth largest magazine at over 7.5 million paid subscribers. The credible content, coupled with an enthusiastic and knowledgeable sales force, provides us with a strong vehicle for educating and monetizing our consumer base. Finally, in mobile, we have several new initiatives that we have launched and will be launching this year. Paul will provide more detail on some of our new mobile offerings, but I do want to highlight that we've launched an Android mobile app store with in-game transaction capability this year. To pull all this together, we are executing a new assortment plan to highlight our new businesses. While video games are still the major focus, we will now have dedicated merchandising sections for DLC, digital PC, POSA cards with our expanded offerings, dedicated end caps for Blizzard digital products, gaming headsets, which represent a fast-growing, highly-profitable category and our new revenue sources of recommerce and new Android tablet sales. And we are more tightly integrating our e-commerce site to work with our stores. Our research shows that over 60% of GameStop customers visit us both in-store and on the Web. So we are investing in strategic growth areas such as mobile Web and PickUp@Store that better reflect how our customers wish to shop today. We expect strong double-digit growth in multi-channel revenue in 2012. In conclusion, we have the programs in place to grow our business, to continue to outpace the market's digital growth rate by nearly 4x and to add new sources of revenue. To further describe these new sources of revenue, I'll now turn the call back to Paul.