Established 1999
 
8,000 companies from
USA,Canada and India.
 
   
Search over 25,000 News & Earnings Archives    
 
Earnings Calls: 
GameStop Fourth Quarter Earnings Call
Author: Maclintosh Kuhlengisa
123jump.com
Last Update: 5:59 PM EDT March 19 2008


(Continued)

Email article | Print article

The video game and entertainment software retailer reported earnings of $189.8 million or $1.14 a share, up 46% over the prior year due to lower than expected foreign tax expense resulting from profitability in many European countries. The business is set up for the worldwide mass specialist set up as the firm sees growth opportunities in the U.S. and abroad as the firm is gaining more brand traction every year. The board approved an additional $130 million note repurchase program.


Investors Question and Answers

 
Sequential Earnings Growth | Quarterly Earnings by Year | Quarterly Earnings Growth by Year

Source: Company filings    Q1:April  Q2:July  Q3:October  Q4:January
 
Tony Wible (Citigroup): Can you clarify a little bit more on your inventory expectations?

Daniel A. DeMatteo: Most of our supplies have improved. We are not seeing any problems with the PS3 and we should have a good stock of PS3s in place when Grand Theft Auto 4 launches, PS2 the same.

PSP, we are still anticipating shortages for the next several months. The Wii, we have been seeing increased flow but we still anticipate it is not going to meet demand potentially for the next two quarters. The Nintendo DS, we have received better flow and increasing allocations, so that has improved. And the Xbox 360, we have had increased allocations, so that has improved.

Arvind Bhatia (Sterne, Agee & Leach): Can you comment on why within the used play, pre-played category, gross margins were slightly down versus last year?

Daniel A. DeMatteo: The largest portion was the increase in refurbishment which drove the sales. The second reason is mix of used game sales, U.S., and international and the international is less developed than what we are here in the U.S..

Colin Sebastian (Lazard Capital Markets): In terms of your longer term expectations, when are you assuming that next generation of consoles might hit the market?

R. Richard Fontaine: We can start with the PlayStation 3 and to some degree a little bit less with the Xbox 360. The horsepower in those units is going to point to a much longer cycle with those. It is possible to believe that the PS3 and even the 360 could still be generating growth when we get out three, four, five, six years into the cycle.

Edward Williams (BMO Capital Markets): Can you give us an idea as to what the percentage of revenues were that came from outside of North America, and the profitability of the European store base?

David W. Carlson: We had about $1 million of operating profit in Europe and we have improved that profitability significantly. Nearly all of the countries in Europe are profitable at this point other than Spain.

We are looking at profitability all over the Scandinavian countries, which had not been profitable. We were looking at profitability in Ireland, which had not been profitable and Germany and Italy continue to be profitable.

Edward Williams (BMO Capital Markets): Was that growth driven on the SG&A side or on just the revenue scale?

David W. Carlson: A little bit of both. The revenues went up and we had a lot of general office and warehouse facilities built when we purchased the operations in Europe and the number of stores that we have added has helped that profitability significantly.

R. Richard Fontaine: Relative to the run-rate on the stores, particularly dealing with Europe, if we were looking at full maturity to full maturity ranges on the U.S. and Europe, the European stores and predominantly because they are in malls, but actually have a higher rate of sale. That is offset by higher rents.

Edward Williams (BMO Capital Markets): On the additional stores you are going to add in 2008, how many of those are going to be going into the European market versus the Canadian and Australian markets?

R. Richard Fontaine: We will put between 170 to 200 of those roughly 325, 350 stores will be in Europe. Both Canada and Australia will continue rapid growth but the majority of them, almost two-thirds of the international stores will be in Europe.

Edward Williams (BMO Capital Markets): Are you seeing anything on the competitive landscape in Spain and Australia?

R. Richard Fontaine: Game has entered the Australian market. There has been some impact on a few of our stores where they have gone in as the second player in a mall but by and large, there has been almost minimal effect. Our share is huge in Australia. Our comp stores actually exceeded the U.S. last year.

Game is also a major player in Spain and Portugal. Our reason for being a little bit slow out of the gate there is that an acquisition that we made shortly before we completed the merger with EB really put us into the old Spain with more neighborhood stores as opposed to new Spain, which is the malls.

Since that time, we have closed about 28 of the neighborhood stores and have ramped up our growth in the mall and the major grocery store centers and again, the growth from those in Spain has been outstanding.

Edward Williams (BMO Capital Markets): What are you seeing with your market share of the family oriented software?

Daniel A. DeMatteo: Because of our new stores and where we have located them and co-tenancy with many of the mass merchants, we perform very well on all types of titles, including the G rated and the family oriented titles.

Bill Armstrong (C.L. King & Associates): How many closings should we model?

R. Richard Fontaine: We will have closed in 2007, 100 stores and about 66 of those were U.S. and the rest were international.
  1  2  3 More: Earnings Calls

 


 

350 Fund Managers Interviews - 10-year Annual earnings on 4,600 U.S. companies - 20-quarter Earnings on 3,800 U.S. companies - 3,200 U.S. IPO Prospectuses
- 2,100 Economic data releases from U.S., EU, UK, India, HK and Australia. 10-year Annual reports on 3,500 U.S. companies -
U.S. Earnings Calendar with 4,800 companies - 90,000 10-K reports - 26,000 Global markets news archive - 2,200 Earnings Conference Call Summaries

© 1999-2008 123jump.com. All rights reserved