What investors think of EA today
As promised, here's a marked-up graph of Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS) stock performance since March of last year, courtesy Jason Kraft and Chris Kwak of Susquehanna Financial Group.
From a high of nearly $70 to today's share price of $50, Electronic Arts hasn't been knocked about quite as hard as competitor Take-Two, but the company's investors have certainly been taken on a roller-coaster like ride through the year. The bad news is that the bad news may not be over yet.
Financial performance is a lagging indicator of customer preference for a company's products. If EA's hurting, it's because gamers (that's all of us!) are simply not buying their products to the extent that we once were. Every time we write about EA a reader always writes in to criticize the company's products for being derivative and unimaginative. It's therefore tempting to suggest that gamer fatigue is finally hitting EA in the pocketbook. There's so much else going on here, though, that such a conclusion would be premature.
