Healthy Demand for ‘Zumba Fitness’ Helps Majesco Start Year Strong

Strong sales of new releases including Zumba Fitness helped Majesco Entertainment start this fiscal year well, but its results for Q4 and the fiscal year ended Oct. 31 were mixed, according to its earnings report issued Tuesday. Majesco “significantly reduced” its loss for the past fiscal year “by reducing costs and focusing on our mass market game franchises and the holiday selling season,” said CEO Jesse Sutton.

The publisher narrowed its Q4 loss to $1.5 million, 4 cents per share, from $4.5 million, 14 cents, a year earlier. But revenue dipped 2.2 percent to $23.4 million. Majesco narrowed its fiscal year loss to $1 million, 3 cents, from $7.2 million, 24 cents. But its fiscal year revenue tumbled 20 percent to $75.6 million.

Majesco was “encouraged by the strong start to fiscal 2011, led by the recent launches” of Crafting Mama, Babysitting Mama, and Zumba Fitness for Kinect, PlayStation Move and the Wii, Sutton said. Zumba Fitness was off to an especially strong start, selling more than 500,000 copies in less than two months, he said. Almost all of Majesco’s “key holiday titles” were released in the January quarter, so the Q4 and fiscal 2010 results “do not reflect the successful launches of” Zumba Fitness, Babysitting Mama, and “a significant number of reorders for Crafting Mama, which was not released until the final week of October,” he said.

Development is “well under way for numerous titles on new platforms, including Kinect for Xbox 360, PlayStation Move, as well as Nintendo 3DS,” Sutton said. The company announced its first 3DS titles earlier in the day. (See the separate report in this issue.) Majesco was also “excited about our digital initiative which encompasses” Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network, iPhone, iPad and various Facebook social games, Sutton said.

The publisher expects to report fiscal 2011 revenue of $85 million-$90 million, and earnings per share of 6-10 cents, it said. The forecast assumes the release of about 19 game SKUs in 2011, including six for the 3DS, four for Kinect, three for the Wii and three for the DS, it said.