Activision Blizzard Posts Top- And Bottom-Line Misses For Q4, Guidance Disappoints

Investors in shares of

hit the proverbial sell button Thursday afternoon as the company posted lackluster quarterly and full-year results. The forward-looking guidance, in addition, did not impress Wall Street. Activision Blizzard saw fourth-quarter pro-forma earnings per share fall nearly 12 percent from $0.94 in the same quarter last year to $0.83. Analysts had been expecting the company to post quarterly EPS around $0.86. Top-line results didn't show as drastic of a slide, falling about 4 percent to $2.118 billion. The consensus estimate of sell-side analysts had sat at $2.2 billion heading into the earnings report. In the company

, Activision Blizzard's often-cited CEO, Bobby Kotick, pointed investors attention to the recently closed purchase of King Digital, a dominant force in the mobile-gaming space. "With our expected closing of the acquisition of King Digital later this month, we will have the largest game network in the world, with over 500 million users playing our games every month. Our entertainment franchises, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and soon Candy Crush, will reach people on mobile, console and desktop devices in almost every country in the world," Kotick said. Looking ahead to the first part of this year, Activision Blizzard modeled first-quarter adjusted earnings around $0.11 on sales of about $800 million. This compares to the current analyst estimate of $0.18 in EPS and sales of about $745 million. Calendar year 2016 non-GAAP earnings are expected around $1.75 per share on sales of about $6.25 billion. Shares of Activision Blizzard last traded at $26.58, down nearly 13 percent from Thursday's closing price of $30.52. Traders have also considered close peers in the gaming space during Thursday's post-market session: shares of

have traded down nearly 4 percent to around $56 even, and shares of

last traded at $34.84, down about 0.7 percent from the close.