14 DAY TRIAL // The Chief Executive Officer of Electronic Arts, the much quoted and very active John Riccitiello, has bought stock in the company that he leads, stock which at the date it was acquired was valued at more than 1 million dollars. The exact number of shares bought was 42,500 and the value per share was 24.50 dollars.
Riccitiello has probably made the move as a sign of support for the performance of his company. Buying significant amounts of company shares is not an unusual move for CEOs of big companies, especially when the results announced are less than stellar.
Electronic Arts has recently announced that its revenue from videogame publishing went up during the last quarter, which ended on September 30, while the company’s losses also went up to 310 million dollars. As a stop gap solution, the company announced it planned to lay off around 600 employees who are not essential to the operations of Electronic Arts. It also lowered the financial expectations for the whole year, saying that the world wide economic crisis is likely to have a negative impact on its business.
Still, Electronic Arts is set to invest some 150 million dollars in long term projects, like creating a digital distribution hub and developing games that can be played online. The management of EA is also set to continue to implement its mantra of “quality over quantity” in creating its videogames line up. Riccitiello has recently stated that the cancellation of Tiberium, the Command & Conquer spin off, is not a singular effort and that one or two games will be “killed” each year.
Speaking of Command & Conquer, Electronic Arts has just released the third game in the Red Alert series on the PC, with an Xbox 360 launch scheduled for later in the year. The real time strategy offers the same mix of campy cutscenes and fast gameplay.