NEXON Financials: Revenue Up, THE FINALS Coming To China, And The First Descendant Is Bigger On Console Than PC

While I find the financial performance of video game and MMO companies to be extremely interesting sometimes, I understand it isn't everyone's favorite thing to read about. In that spirit, I'll sum up the actual financial results for NEXON's 2nd quarter pretty quickly and then move on to some interesting details and announcements revealed in those financial statements.

NEXON's second quarter had higher revenues than even the company expected. Hitting approximately $88 million, the second quarter was up 30% compared to this quarter last year and most of this was driven by the mobile division. Dungeon&Fighter going mobile and releasing in China has been huge, FC Mobile and FC Online continue to deliver, and even MapleStory saw a 9% revenue increase which the company attributes to "ongoing improvements" and releasing in other regions.

Combined with cost cutting in HR, marketing, and other expense departments, NEXON expects the third quarter to also pull in more than originally thought in both revenue and operating income.

That said, the presentation does announce a few projects, some multiplayer and some single-player, in the company's pipeline. While not all of them are slated for global release, there does seem to be something for every region coming, staying consistent with NEXON's "Growth Initiative."

The results led to NEXON repurchasing over $21 million worth of shares and the company plans to repurchase the remaining $50 million by 2027.

Now, on to some interesting tidbits:

• Shooter game THE FINALS will launch in China, along with ARC Raiders, as NEXON, Embark Studios, and Tencent have inked a deal to bring the titles to the country. 
• The launch of The First Descendant has started to make its mark on NEXON's bottom line with North America being the largest playerbase. Interestingly, the looter-shooter has a bigger console presence with 60% of players booting it up on their TV rather than their PC.
• Blue Archive debuted an animated series back in April and this has led to an increase in the IP's players and revenue. Japan growth was a Q2 record, growing the player base by double digits.

 As a final sidebar, expect more improvements to THE FINALS. Obviously a Chinese launch is sure to bring in a ton of income, but the game mysteriously doesn't get called out directly with any numbers attached to it. The presentation just mentions that more improvements will be made to "increase player retention." In the by region breakdowns, THE FINALS only appears in the top 3 PC titles on the NA slide, and even in that slide it simply says the game is "within expected range."

On Steam, the game seems to have stabilized around the 13K-14K average player mark, but that doesn't tell us any of the financial story or factor in console players. That's one I'll be keeping an eye on.