Take-Two Interactive held its Q3 2023 earnings call on Monday afternoon. And while there were a number of statements made, including some impressive sales numbers, Take-Two also announced that it will be implementing $50 million in cuts.
Included in that program will be “personnel, processes, infrastructure, and other areas, and will primarily focus on corporate and publishing functions.”
The reason given for the cuts, according to Take-Two, is what they claim is the “current backdrop” and their “strong commitment to efficiency”. This comes after the company reported $1.41 billion in revenue against $153.4 million in net loss. Regarding revenue specifically, the $1.41 billion represents a 56% year-over-year increase.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, CEO Strauss Zelnick says that he doesn’t expect the cuts to lead to a large reduction in staff.
“[W]e continue to support and build our development teams,” he said. “We don’t expect any kind of broad-based reduction in force. We are going department by department and trying to drive efficiency.”
As far as the timeline for the cuts, the company said that they will begin during the current quarter.
“Take-Two believes these actions, combined with its focus on profitably growing its scale, will enable the Company to maximize its margins as it delivers on its anticipated growth trajectory over the next few years,” they said while mentioning the additional $100 million of “cost synergies” from its combination with Zynga.
Insider Gaming has reached out to Take-Two for more clarification on what the cuts and reductions will mean for studios under the Take-Two umbrella.
For more Insider Gaming, check out our story on plans for the Call of Duty franchise.
Cost cutting metrics is exactly what the street wants to see. I’m shocked though there’s no mention of the triple lowered guidance across revenues, EPS, and net bookings.
“ Net Bookings of $1.38 billion were slightly below our prior guidance, as we believe that consumers shifted their holiday spending toward established blockbuster franchises and titles that were offered with pricing promotions in light of macroeconomic conditions. While our catalog benefited from this trend, it affected the performance of certain of our new releases and recurrent consumer spending for some of our console and PC games”