EA Mobile sees steady growth of 4% in Q1 FY11 with $52 million in sales

EA (NASDAQ: ERTS) has announced its Q1 FY11 financials, which reveal EA Mobile sales were $52 million for the three months ending June 30.

This is up 4 percent year-on-year compared to the $50 million of Q1 FY10, but a drop compared to the $55 million of revenue booked during its strong holiday Q4 quarter.

Overall, EA Mobile accounted for 6.4 percent of EA's total Q1 revenues of $815 million.

EA said it was the number 1 publisher across all platforms on the Apple App Store in the June quarter, and had nine of the top ten games when the iPhone 4 launched.

CEO John Riccitiello also pointed to the performance of Scrabble on the iPad as driving forward EA's digital gaming business.

All these figures are provided using the standard Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

EA Mobile's sales for Q1 FY11 under non-GAAP - which is used to strip out one-off costs and income to try and make year-on-year comparisons easier - were $50 million.

In comparison, rival mobile publisher Gameloft's sales for the same period were €33.6 million (approx. $44 million), although around six percentage of this includes console sales via Nintendo's WiiWare and DSiWare channels.

EA's revenue from other portable platforms such as PSP and DS continues to fall off heavily. PSP sales were down 50 percent year-on-year to $19 million and DS down 61 percent to $11 million.

As a combined sector, EA's mobile sales (what it labels Wireless) were $82 million, down 29 percent year-on-year.

Overall sales for the whole of EA during Q1 FY11 were up 27 percent year-on-year to $815 billion.

The company made a profit of $96 million as compared with a net loss of $234 million for the prior quarter.

Non-GAAP net revenue for the quarter was $539, down 34 percent, while the non-GAAP loss was $78 million compared to $6 million a year ago.

EA said it's non-GAAP performance was expected due to a reduction in the number of games released.

EA expects to make a loss in Q2 FY11, but it affirmed its full year guidance of GAAP net revenue of $3.35 to $3.60 billion and non-GAAP revenue of $3.65 to $3.90 billion.

The company has $1.1 billion in cash, down 12 percent year-on-year, and $1.9 billion in terms of cash, short-term investments and other securities.

[source: EA]