EA Stock Surges After Star Wars: The Old Republic Subscriber Numbers Reveal

Giuseppe Nelva February 2, 2012 4:15 PM EST

Yesterday Electronic Arts held its Q3 2012 Fiscal Earnings Conference Call, revealing between the other things that its AAA MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic is sitting on 1.7 million active users and growing.

The game was considered by some market analysts (while others disagreed) a reason for concern on EA’s financial stability, so the stock market was bound to react to the good news. And it did.

Yesterday EA stock closed at $18.44. Today, on the closure of the market a few minutes ago, the shares of the publisher from Redwood were priced $19.565 showing a very solid 6.1% climb. By comparison the whole NASDAQ index gained only a 0.4%.

Most of the growth actually happened yesterday during the after hours trading session, that started as EA’s conference call was closing. Both in the after hours trading session and this morning in the pre-market trading session EA stock was one of the most traded between those of the Nasdaq Index.

While the flattering results of Star Wars: The Old Republic weren’t the only positive results announced during the Earnings Call, as other games like Battlefield 3 and FIFA 12 performed very well in the latest quarter and there were quite a few good news overall, most of those were expected.

Such high numbers and an indication of growth for Star Wars: The Old Republic were unexpected by many, especially considering the crossfire by some analysts and part of the media (that too often thrives on negativity). That’s most probably the primary factor behind the very positive market reaction.

There’s no doubt that quite a few analysts (especially the one that motivated his analysis with casual observation of early play”) will get the evil eye from investors that took their rushed advice. We’ll see if the media will change its tune going forward.