Game kingpin and Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS) has another hit on its hands. Madden NFL 2005 was the top-selling game its first week on the market. Selling 1.35 million units, it's another Madden touchdown in the profit end zone for this long-running franchise.
A year ago yesterday, fellow Fool Rick Aristotle Munarriz reported that Electronic Arts was hitting an all-time high and that Madden NFL 2004 was the top-selling game on Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) for the Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation 2 platform. Madden ended the year as the top-selling game for 2003.
Well, it's a year later, and Electronic Arts is up a mere 10% over the last 52 weeks. The stock is down 11% from the all-time high it set in April. What's up?
As fellow contributor Jeff Hwang noted last week, Sega tried to lure customers away from the $50 Madden game with the $20 ESPN NFL 2K5. Discounters such as Target (NYSE: TGT) sold it for $16. Although the game sold well, Madden still came out strong.
The buzz now is that Electronic Arts might not have the strongest holiday lineup. One prize in that lineup is the James Bond game Golden Eye: Rogue Agent. James, Oddjob, and the whole gang are getting the attention of a 120-person creative team. This is going to be another quality effort from Electronic Arts, and its potential should not be underestimated.
Not part of the buzz, but certainly near and dear to Electronic Arts, is online gaming. Yesterday, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and the company announced they would join forces to hold the FIFA Interactive World Cup during the, you guessed it, holiday sales season. It's a great way to sell the Electronic Arts FIFA game and get players used to online gaming.
Electronic Arts is selling for 24 times 2004 estimated earnings. With no debt, and $2.4 billion in cash, it is a financial powerhouse. And, although fellow Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation Activision (Nasdaq: ATVI) is a great competitor, it does not enjoy EA's high gross margins and operating margins.
Are you constantly confronted with stocks selling for 20 times earnings that are slower growers of revenue and earnings -- and some even carry monstrous debt loads? Electronic Arts is priced such that any favorable event could easily send this stock breaking out to new highs.
If you're game, here's more on the video fun industry:
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Fool contributor W.D. Crotty does not own stock in the companies mentioned.
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