Call of Duty drives record year for Activision Blizzard

Activision Blizzard reported record full-year and fourth quarter results today thanks in large part to a banner year for the Call of Duty franchise.

Call of Duty nearly doubled its net bookings in 2020 thanks to the first full year of Call of Duty Mobile, the March debut of the free-to-play Call of Duty: Warzone, and traditional Call of Duty premium releases like Modern Warfare and Black Ops Cold War that collectively saw unit sales up 40% for the year.

Company-wide, Activision Blizzard posted full-year net revenues up 25% to $8.09 billion, while net bookings were up 44% to $8.42 billion. Net profits rose 46% to $2.2 billion.

For the holiday quarter on its own, revenues were up 22% to $2.41 billion with net bookings up 13% to $3.05 billion. Net profits were down 3% to $508 million.

"We are already seeing the impact of our growth initiatives for Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush, which we expect to again drive strong results in 2021," the company said in reporting its results. "And at the same time, we are making significant progress against our development pipeline for other key intellectual properties, which we expect to fuel further growth in 2022 and beyond."

Given Call of Duty's performance, it's no surprise that the Activision division showed the strongest growth for the company, with full year net revenues up 77% to $3.9 billion. Its full year operating income jumped 120% to $1.87 billion, which means Activision's profits were nearly as high as Blizzard's sales.

For the full year, Blizzard posted net revenues up 8% to $1.91 billion, with the most notable jump being World of Warcraft's 40% year-over-year increase in net bookings.

King saw revenues up a little less than 7% to $2.16 billion.

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