NCsoft Earning report is out

[Randomvector]

Having a look now.

you can get it at http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/quarterly.aspx if you want to take a look.

Hopefully someone with business knowledge can use it to shed light on things

[Randomvector]

looks like they are doing well <sigh> Was hoping they were not.

[Randomvector]

Thought, net income seems to be half of 2011. So, yay? <sigh> I don't know anything about how to read this.

[Heroette]

It looks like they did much better in the Q3 than in Q2.  I deal with Profit and Loss statements and it would take me a more than a quick glance to analyze it but yeah, they didn't do bad last quarter at all.  Their employment costs went down so that helped with the profit end.  In all honesty, the lost of City of Heroes is not going to impact them much at all financially.

[V-Mink]

It looks like they did much better in the Q3 than in Q2.  I deal with Profit and Loss statements and it would take me a more than a quick glance to analyze it but yeah, they didn't do bad last quarter at all.  Their employment costs went down so that helped with the profit end.  In all honesty, the lost of City of Heroes is not going to impact them much at all financially.

Considering that CoH was making a profit but was not making a huge percent of NCsoft's income, this is not really unexpected.

This being said, something made their stock plummet.  Now it stands to see if the stockholders believe the quarterly report.

[NecrotechMaster]

well if their q3 earnings reflect GW2 release plus the fact that they just layoff 80-100 employees thats easily $4.8+ mil a year (im assuming that everyone made at least $60k a year)

its the q4 earnings after we continue the PR war after the game actually shuts down and blade and soul flops

[Randomvector]

well, their sales in Korea are down. Don't know what that means.

[Hedgefund]

I just listened to the conf call (I listened to the Q2 call 3 months ago).  This one was definitely more bullish than the last one.  Sales were up, expenses were down so they have a right to be so bullish.  They expect Q4 to be even better.  Sorry schadenfreude lovers.

Paragon Studios and City of wasn't mentioned once.  No questions were asked by the investors, no mention by NCSoft.  Blade & Soul and GW2 took up a large part of the discussion.

On another note, I keep seeing mention that City of was profitable.  What proof of this has been uncovered?  I don't read many of the posts so I apologize if I missed this proven definitively.

[TimtheEnchanter]

'schadenfreude'

That describes half the motivation of all competitive business.

[Turjan]

The look of that overall is pretty much exactly what I expected, with the majority of attention shifted to their new 'Shinies' of GW2 and B&S. Which, considering that they knew their Q3 figures would be pretty much on this curve, again makes one wonder what on earth they stood to gain from closing CoH rather than keeping it ticking over.

[TimtheEnchanter]

The look of that overall is pretty much exactly what I expected, with the majority of attention shifted to their new 'Shinies' of GW2 and B&S. Which, considering that they knew their Q3 figures would be pretty much on this curve, again makes one wonder what on earth they stood to gain from closing CoH rather than keeping it ticking over.

You would think that NC would want to show how much money they saved by getting rid of CoH, so they could say, "There, see? It was the right decision." That it apparently got no mention anywhere is even more fuel for conspiracy theories.

[Turjan]

Have a look at the NC Interactive figures... went from a $7million loss for Q2 to just a $400K loss....

Mr.G, you yourself have stated that half that of Paragon Studios was working on non-CoH projects - and when you destroy an entire studio, you also destroy all expenses that studio incurred. A single figure for all says nothing about what part of NCI itself may have been in the black and what may have been in the red.

But that's by-the-by to an extent - my major concern is that prior to this release, the red figures for NCI were very little different from what they have been for many Qs now...so why the decision to close CoH NOW? There's nothing in the report that indicates a sudden need to change the running of NCI. Remember the closure came as a shock to everyone, players and devs alike.

And if NCsoft HQ knew profits were going to rise the moment B&S and GW2 hit the shelves, that means there's even less reason to close something they'd been happy to keep in an apparent red column for years.

That's what I mean by questioning what they stood to gain. Once again, the only logic comes from a notion of "quietly burying something old and small while there's a big clamour going on to cover it" (which they could've done during any previous game launch while CoH was running tbh, should they have needed to) or else some bizarre personal reason known only to TJKim himself. Personally, I'm more and more favouring the latter explanation.

[Moonfyire101]

For what it's worth, if you look at it you'll notice their sales went up and their labor costs went down. I don't think the closing of CoH really helped them as much as it shows on their profits this quarter. The loss of Paragon just happened to coincide with 2 game releases which really buffed their income. I'm gonna say if CoH stayed it would still show the same increase minus the labor costs from paragon studios.

Really in my opinion, and u can take it or leave it, they could have left CoH and it would still look like an increase. They could have laid off some of the non key employees and merged servers to save money and showed the same "progress". Looks like they did the shut down this quarter on purpose so it looks like CoH was the problem.

And I'm gonna say CoH wasn't mentioned in the conference because someone might just respond the way I just did.

Also, they are still losing money in domestic subsidiaries so I suspect there will be closures of other departments in the near future. Ones in Korea it looks like but again, they might just close the offices here to make up for loss their as they did with CoH.

And finally, GW1 was not mentioned in the breakdown...I wonder why that is. I remember inQ2 it made less money than CoH. Embarrassed much? This is why they left it off and grouped it with other.

Very clever NCSoft, cover it all up for your investors...

[Manga]

Don't be fooled by the report.  NCSoft will see a quick boost to profit because they just fired 80 of the most expensive employees it had at Paragon Studios, and stopped paying the bills for CoH.  That's the equivelent of not paying your morgage or car payment - suddenly you have a lot of extra money at the end of the month.

The effect on profit won't really appear until a year from the day Paragon Studios shut down.  Which is what NCSoft is countng on, that within the next year they will make up the loss in profit and then some via Blade & Soul.

[Riff]

What we need to look for in that - and a better financial analyst than I might know where to look - is the costs of shutting down Paragon Studios.

Maybe what the Titan Network needs to do is to put a presentation together for the NCSoft shareholders and wider world detailing what is missing from these figures.

[Terwyn]

Don't be fooled by the report.  NCSoft will see a quick boost to profit because they just fired 80 of the most expensive employees it had at Paragon Studios, and stopped paying the bills for CoH.  That's the equivelent of not paying your morgage or car payment - suddenly you have a lot of extra money at the end of the month.

The effect on profit won't really appear until a year from the day Paragon Studios shut down.  Which is what NCSoft is countng on, that within the next year they will make up the loss in profit and then some via Blade & Soul.

I believe they will find that they are wrong. ^_^

[Moonfyire101]

I believe they will find that they are wrong. ^_^

yes i agree and said something similar pointing out reasons ----^

[Harermuir]

I think we have here the reason for the shutdown. Cutting the cost make for a better report this term, and that can be used to make the B&S and guildwar launches seems better. I think that maybe they want an as good as possible report next term, to claim a good rentability of the two games, and we can press that licensing/selling the ip (or the game) will be a good way to make some money.

[Moonfyire101]

yeah maybe then selling will seem good...we can hope. They are going to have to show they are still making money some how and the new release money isn't gonna last for more than a couple quarters.

[Technerdoc]

I think we have here the reason for the shutdown. Cutting the cost make for a better report this term, and that can be used to make the B&S and guildwar launches seems better. I think that maybe they want an as good as possible report next term, to claim a good rentability of the two games, and we can press that licensing/selling the ip (or the game) will be a good way to make some money.

...but this works only one time. They can't close an other City of Heroes for the next report and I don't see how they want to make the big deal. Guild Wars 2 players are happy that they can play this game for "free", so I don't see that this game makes the big money in the future. Then they have Linage, Aion and Wildstar isn't out so far (...and everyone must be a fool in playing this after all this mess, to bad for an good looking game so far).