Grapevine, Texas – GameStop, the video game and entertainment software retailer, reported dramatically higher net earnings and sales for its first quarter, ended May 3.
Net earnings were $62.1 million for first quarter as compared with net earnings of $24.7 million for the previous year’s opening quarter, an increase of 151.4 percent.
GameStop sales increased 41.8 percent to $1.8 billion in the first quarter, in comparison with $1.27 billion in the prior-year quarter. Comp-store sales increased 27.1 percent during the first quarter.
The chain reported new video game software sales grew “an amazing 72 percent;” the top five selling games during the quarter were Take Two Interactive’s Grand Theft Auto IV, with only five days of sales at the end of the quarter; Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart WII from Nintendo; Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 from Ubisoft; and Electronic Arts’ Army Of Two.
R. Richard Fontaine, chairman/CEO, indicated, “We are very bullish on the future as three major metrics are transforming the business and accelerating the potential for GameStop growth. The installed base of video game consoles grew 34 percent in 2007, or nearly 31 million units, the highest incremental growth in the history of the business, and we are forecasting that hardware unit [sell-through] will match these levels in 2008. And behind the huge hardware growth is the fact that the demographic for video gaming is expanding dramatically as industry figures indicate that 38 percent of game players are female.”
He added, “We have an outstanding lineup of new games coming during the rest of the year, including Nintendo’s Wii Fit, Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4, Microsoft’s Gears Of War 2, and Activision’s Guitar Hero 4.”
GameStop has more than 5,400 stores in 16 countries and during the first quarter opened a record 210 stores. “We are well underway to achieving our goal of opening between 550 and 600 new stores in 2008. With half of the new stores opening outside of the U.S., our international store base will grow by 25 percent and our overall global market share will continue to increase,” Fontaine added.
In the TWICE Top 100 Consumer Electronics Retailers Report, released this week, GameStop maintained its No. 7 ranking with $4.262 billion during calendar year 2007, a sales gain of 32.3 percent.
