Lainie Goldstein
Analyst · Chris Schoell with UBS Financial
Thanks, Karl, and good afternoon, everyone. We achieved outstanding first quarter results, driven by our strong franchises, talented teams and unwavering commitment to our strategic vision. Our performance was broad-based across our labels, as we engage players with exciting new game features and content updates while also advancing development of our highly anticipated pipeline. I'd like to thank our incredible teams worldwide for their hard work and passion for our business. Turning to our results. We delivered first quarter net bookings of $1.42 billion, which was significantly above our guidance range of $1.25 billion to $1.3 billion. This reflected better-than-expected performance from several Mobile titles, including Toon Blast, Match Factory!, NBA 2K All-Star and Color Block Jam, as well as NBA 2K and the Grand Theft Auto series. Recurrent consumer spending grew 17% for the period, which was meaningfully above our guidance of 7% growth and accounted for 83% of net bookings. Several of our businesses outperformed, including NBA 2K, which is up nearly 50%, Mobile, which grew low teens, and Grand Theft Auto Online, which increased low single digits. During the quarter, we released Civilization VII for Meta Quest VR and Nintendo Switch 2. GAAP net revenue increased 12% to $1.5 billion, while cost of revenue declined 1% to $559 million and operating expenses decreased 3% to $923 million. On a management basis, operating expenses rose 3% year-over-year, which was slightly above our forecast of 2% growth, primarily due to higher personnel costs. Total marketing expenses were within our forecast range for the quarter. Zynga made incremental user acquisition investments to support its robust performance, which was offset by 2K shifting some marketing out of Q1 into later this fiscal year. Turning to our guidance. I'll begin with our full fiscal year expectations. We are raising our net bookings outlook range to $6.05 billion to $6.15 billion, which represents 8% growth over fiscal 2025 at the midpoint. The increase predominantly reflects our strong first quarter performance and to a lesser degree, updates to our forecast, including FX. The largest contributor to net bookings are expected to be NBA 2K, the Grand Theft Auto series, Toon Blast, Borderlands 4, Match Factory!, the Red Dead Redemption series, Color Block Jam, Empires & Puzzles and Words With Friends. We now expect recurrent consumer spending to grow approximately 4%, which is revised upward from our prior forecast of flat, representing 76% of net bookings. We expect NBA 2K to grow mid-teens, Mobile to grow low single digits and Grand Theft Auto Online to decline. We expect the net bookings breakdown from our label to be roughly 45% Zynga, 39% 2K and 16% Rockstar Games. We continue to expect operating cash flow of approximately $130 million and capital expenditures of approximately $140 million. We now expect GAAP net revenue to range from $6.1 billion to $6.2 billion and cost of revenue to range from $2.55 billion to $2.57 billion. Our total operating expenses are now expected to range from $3.84 billion to $3.86 billion compared to $7.45 billion last year. On a management basis, we expect operating expense growth of approximately 5% year-over-year. This is up slightly from our prior forecast due to higher personnel costs as well as increased marketing spend to support our Mobile portfolio and [ netbacks ]. I'd like to point out that our earnings per share calculations reflect our higher share count following our recent equity issuance. Now moving on to our guidance for the fiscal second quarter. We project net bookings to range from $1.7 billion to $1.75 billion compared to $1.47 billion in the second quarter last year. Our release slate for the quarter includes Mafia: The Old Country and NBA 2K26 and Borderlands 4. The largest contributors to net bookings are expected to be NBA 2K, Borderlands 4, the Grand Theft Auto series, Toon Blast, Match Factory!, Empires & Puzzles, Color Block Jam, the Red Dead Redemption series, Words With Friends and Mafia: The Old Country. Operating expenses are planned to range from $1.02 billion to $1.03 billion. On a management basis, operating expenses are expected We project recurrent consumer spending to increase by approximately 1%, which assumes a low single-digit increase for NBA 2K, billion. to grow by approximately 7% year-over-year, which is primarily driven by marketing to support our strong release slate during the period. Looking ahead, our confidence in our outlook is exceptionally strong. Our company is set to deliver the most ambitious pipeline in our history, which we believe will unlock a new record level of scale as well as enhanced profitability. As we release exciting new hits and explore additional growth opportunities, both organic and inorganic, we expect to achieve meaningful returns for our shareholders. Thank you. I'll now turn the call back to Strauss.