PUBG Made Record Revenue in the First Quarter of 2022

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds makers KRAFTON has released an earnings preview for their first quarter of 2022. According to consolidated financial accounts prepared in compliance with the Korean International Financial Reporting Standard, KRAFTON generated USD 405.7 million in quarterly revenue (K-IFRS). KRAFTON's quarterly sales hit a new high, up 17.8% from the previous quarter and 13.50% from the previous year. Additional financial information for the first quarter of 2022 is provided in the table below:

The following summarizes the financial results for the first quarter of 2022:

- Revenue: $405.7 million USD (+17.8% QoQ and +13.5% YoY)
- Operating Profit: $241.9 million USD (+628% QOQ and +37% YoY)
- Net Profit: $190.2 million USD

 

Reduced operational expenses (e.g. marketing expenditures) and the elimination of one-time charges paid from stock compensation in 2021 were the primary drivers of the increase in Operating Profit from quarter to quarter and year to year.

Each platform saw steady growth in Q1 2022 for the PUBG IP. PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS' average monthly active users (MAU) roughly quadrupled from Q4 2021 to Q1 2022 due to a large influx of reactivated legacy gamers after the game's January 2022 shift to free-to-play (F2P). Sales were boosted by an increase in the number of paid users by more than two-fold throughout the quarter. Due to this, PC sales of PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS hit USD 82.3 million, an increase of 61% over last year. PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS console sales grew by 124 percent in the first quarter and 274 percent in the first year.

PUBG: MOBILE's Q1 2022 revenue was USD 307.1 million, an increase of 30 percent over the previous quarter and a 5 percent increase over the previous year. Several in-game IP partnerships and sophisticated live support systems were responsible for these gains.

In the first quarter of 2022, 95 percent of KRAFTON's income came from outside of South Korea. By actively investing in India's IT and media ecosystems, the firm has helped the growth of the Indian gaming industry. As a result, BATTLEGROUNDS MOBILE INDIA's proportion of the market and sales increased over time.

Codenamed "Project M" and "The Callisto Protocol," KRAFTON plans to release additional games this year. As a result of KRAFTON's acquisition of Unknown Worlds in 2021, the team behind the Subnautica series is hard at work on a new project, code-named "Project M," which will go into early access later this year. In a sci-fi setting, "Project M" is a completely original turn-based strategy game. Striking Distance Studios' unique survival horror game, The Callisto Protocol, will be released in 2022. Deep learning-based games are also being developed and tested on Steam by in-house project incubators.

A joint venture with NAVER Z and a focus on Web 3.0 have also been priorities for the firm. A Sandbox editing tool for game development and metaverse implementation has been developed by a team of NFT researchers and game developers. An alpha test is planned for the first quarter of 2023, according to the team. The Create to Earn (C2E) Ecosystem will be a major focus for KRAFTON.
 

Azfar Rayan (@AzfarRayan)
Editor, NoobFeed