Investors have traded Electronic Arts stock since 1990, but the publisher’s stock hit a new milestone today.
EA’s share price jumped up over $100 for the first time in its history in after-hours trading today. That’s up nearly 4 percent from the market close. This comes after the company reported record net revenue and operating cash flow for its fiscal 2017. EA also revealed that FIFA has 21 million players and Battlefield 1 has 19 million players.
With this latest surge in value, EA’s market capitalization is now also nearing $30 billion. That makes it one of the biggest companies in the gaming industry. For 2017, EA generated $4.845 billion in revenues. That’s up from $4.396 billion in fiscal 2016, and the company owes that continued growth to its expanding digital sales. While physical gaming sales were flat year-over-year, digital jumped from $2.409 billion to $4.874 billion.
One of the main reasons that EA has unlocked so much digital growth over the last couple of years is that it has found multiple ways to leverage its biggest franchises on the current generation of consoles. Franchises like Battlefield, Madden, and FIFA have all continued to sell better, but they have also seen huge returns from their digital add-ons. FIFA Ultimate Team, a mode where players build custom teams from decks of cards, is a huge source of cash. Players regularly spend hundreds of dollars each trying to get certain high-level cards to complete their teams and to improve their competitiveness online.
This is why console digital revenues for EA have grown from $303 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2015 to $515 million in Q4 2017.
At the time this story went live, EA’s stock was trading at $99.80.