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Electronic Arts (EA) Enters Partnership With Max Verstappen

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Electronic Arts (EA - Free Report) recently announced that it has signed a partnership with Formula One World Champion Max Verstappen, which will allow the Oracle Red Bull Racing driver to collaborate with the brand to create content across the EA SPORTS portfolio.

Max has been showing great performance at Formula One for the last two years, which has helped him gain a lot of fame. This fame and craze among fans could help EA attract those fans to its platform.

Additionally, Oracle’s (ORCL - Free Report) Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, which allows the Oracle Red Bull Racing team to run real-time analytics throughout every race to help guide strategy decisions, could also be used to enhance the player experience at EA’s gaming platform.

EA Sports to Boost Company’s Top Line

EA has been benefiting from the EA Sports division lately. The EA SPORTS FIFA 23 saw net bookings growth of 4% year over year in the third quarter of fiscal 2023 with rapid growth occurring in FIFA Online 4 and FIFA Mobile.

To keep this growth maintained in the ongoing quarter as well, EA Sports has recently hosted the NFL Pro Bowl: Madden NFL 23 Edition on Feb 4, which gained traction from bringing back the redesigned version of the classic Madden Cruiser, which is a giant bus that the sports and cultural icon, John Madden used to ride around in.
 

EA: Electronic Arts - Price & Consenus Chart - Zacks.com https://www.zacks.com https://staticx-tuner.zacks.com To further address its football fans, EA has planned to launch its own football video game title in 2023 called EA Sports FC. The game, which will be available by September across PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, is said to have all the great experiences, modes, leagues, tournaments, clubs and athletes that the players witness in other football games.

These efforts taken by EA Sports are likely to strengthen its gaming portfolio and attract players to it.

However, these efforts could be hindered by major macroeconomic headwinds such as the upcoming recession that the company is set to face. Due to this, it has lowered its net bookings guidance for fourth-quarter fiscal 2022 by almost 23%.

To cut costs, the company has also shelved games such as mobile versioned games of Apex Legends and Battlefield and has delayed the release of the highly anticipated Star Wars Jedi: Survivor from March to late April. This has disappointed its fans immensely.

The share price of EA has declined 44.6% in the past year compared with the Zacks Consumer Discretionary Sector, which fell 18.6% in the same time frame.

Zack Rank & Stocks to Consider

EA currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Some better-ranked stocks in the same sector are Stride (LRN - Free Report) and BJ’s Wholesale Club (BJ - Free Report) , each sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

Shares of Stride have gained 19.4% in the past year. Its earnings are estimated at $1.08 per share, which increased by 13.6% over the past 30 days.

Shares of BJ’s Wholesale Club have increased 22.2% in the past year. Its earnings are estimated at 88 cents per share, which has been constant over the past month.

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