Electronic Arts Inc.

Good afternoon. My name is Josh and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Electronic Arts first quarter fiscal year 2024 conference call. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Katie Burke, Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to EA's first quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings call. With me today are Andrew Wilson, our CEO, Stuart Canfield, our CFO, and Laura Miele, President of EA Entertainment, Technology, and Central Development. Please note that our SEC filings and our earnings release are available at ir.ea.com. In addition, we have posted detailed earnings slides to accompany our prepared remarks. Lastly, after the call, we will post our prepared remarks, an audio replay of this call, and a transcript. With regards to our calendar, Our second quarter fiscal 2024 earnings call is scheduled for Wednesday, November 1st. As a reminder, we post the schedule of upcoming earnings calls for the fiscal year on our IR website. This presentation and our comments include forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company. Actual events and results may differ materially from our expectations. We refer you to our most recent Form 10-K, for a discussion of risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed today. Electronic Arts makes these statements as of today, August 1, 2023, and disclaims any duty to update them. During this call, the financial metrics, with the exception of free cash flow, will be presented on a GAAP basis. Please see our earnings slides for further information. All comparisons made in the course of this call are against the same period in the prior year unless otherwise stated. Now, I'll turn the call over to Andrew.

Thanks, Katie. It's great to be here with all of you. To begin, I want to welcome Stuart Canfield, who most of you already know. I have worked with Stuart for nearly two decades. He has been a trusted partner and valuable leader through many of the biggest transformations at Electronic Arts. I'm excited to be working with Stuart as our new Chief Financial Officer, driving multi-year growth and unlocking long-term value. It was a record Q1 for EA, with net bookings of $1.6 billion. up 21% year over year, driven by sustained momentum across the entire EA Sports FIFA ecosystem and the launch of Star Wars Jedi Survivor. During the quarter, we executed across our business, launching five new high-quality titles while providing over 145 content updates across 37 titles. Our teams continue to create the entertainment and experiences that inspire, engage, and connect hundreds of millions of players. To every EA employee, for all that you do for our communities, thank you. EA Sports FIFA had the biggest Q1 in our company's history. The franchise continues to deliver compelling content to our growing community, driving strong engagement and accelerating net bookings growth. FIFA Ultimate Team engaged tens of millions of fans and daily average users grew 15%. FIFA Mobile attracted over 65 million new players in the quarter alone. FIFA Online produced double-digit growth across monthly, weekly, and daily average users. These remarkable results are a testament to our incredible teams executing against our strategy, sharpened by 30 years of passion, innovation, and leadership in interactive football. Star Wars Jedi Survivor is pure blockbuster entertainment rooted in a timeless, culture-defining IP. Our team at Respawn proudly launched this title to critical acclaim and commercial success. Millions of players have already engaged with the game, making this one of the biggest events in the Star Wars galaxy this year. Thanks to the strength of this legendary franchise and community demand, our development team has committed to bringing this Jedi experience to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Over the coming year, we will harness the community's passion and capitalize on key Star Wars franchise moments to drive continued engagement for this incredible game. Since going free to enter, The Sims 4 continues to reach a broader global audience, welcoming over 4 million new players in the quarter. In addition to continuing to deliver new content and experiences to expand The Sims 4, the Maxis team is developing a new, innovative, parallel experience that will ignite the imaginations of the next generation of players. In Q1, our mobile business delivered ahead of our expectations, driven by outperformance across our broad portfolio, including FIFA Mobile, Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, and The Sims FreePlay. Over the last year, we have focused and refined our approach to mobile. We're excited to see the results as we continue to drive the long-term profitable growth. During the quarter, we launched Lord of the Rings Heroes of Middle-Earth. Based on strong metrics, the team is tuning and balancing the game to scale user acquisition and promotion in the coming months. Apex Legends is one of the strongest franchises and live services in the industry with 18 million active monthly players and an impressive retention rate of over 70%. After a highly successful 16th season, we launched season 17 in May with new variations of gameplay and monetization. While this new season did not meet our financial expectations, the team has implied important learnings, including new game mechanics to engage and retain players, which are already generating momentum. We will continue to reinforce the strength of this franchise by introducing new modes of play and investing in regional marketing as well as culturalization in key markets. Looking forward, I've never been more excited for what's to come as we head into the biggest sports season in our company's history. As the world's preeminent interactive American football experience, Madden NFL continues to deliver higher engagement year over year, an indicator of future success. This franchise is one of the most powerful IPs in all of sports and is at the center of football culture, bringing the community together in our game and beyond. we are building on a tidal wave of community excitement after the reveal of Josh Allen as Madden NFL 24's cover athlete. This completely new experience will offer more fun, more immersive gameplay, and, for the first time ever, cross-play to amplify the power of community as we build a connected, multi-platform ecosystem around American football. On July 13th, we unveiled our vision for a new era of global football with EA Sports FC24. Alongside this amazing title, we announced advancements of FC Mobile and FC Online in Asia, as well as new experiences, FC Tactical Mobile and FC Pro Esports. This was the biggest reveal we've ever had, generating almost double the positive worldwide response to FIFA 23's debut. Over two and a half million people have watched the event live and on demand so far, an amazing celebration for the global football community. To secure a fan-first future for FC, we have announced new long-term global partnerships with UEFA, the Premier League, La Liga, Frauen Bundesliga, Liga F, and many more. With these recent announcements alongside our existing and ongoing network of partnerships, the game will showcase 19,000 fully licensed footballers, 700 squads, 30 leagues, and the biggest competitions. As a result, FC24 is the most authentic, interactive football experience ever created. It's also a massive leap forward in gameplay innovation with a trio of cutting-edge technologies, HyperMotion V, play styles by Opta, and a revolutionized Frostbite engine. The highly anticipated release of FC24 in September is the first giant step forward towards realizing a multi-experience global platform capable of connecting over a billion fans. To do more extraordinary things for our people, players, and communities, our teams are building the strongest pipeline in the history of EA to drive multi-year growth. Over the next few years, we will launch numerous experiences that grow and deepen the fandom of our legendary IP. Our multi-year target investments toward our biggest opportunities include global titles like Blockbuster Storytelling from Dragon Age, incredible skateboarding gameplay and social connection from Skate, and a revival of EA Sports college football that celebrates the action, culture, and tradition of the sport like never before. We're also hard at work on a new experience from The Sims that will transform what players can do with creativity, a sprawling action-adventure Iron Man game, a reimagination of Battlefield as a truly connected ecosystem, and the expansion of the Apex Legends universe across platforms, geographies, and modalities of play. The most recent reveal of our Black Panther project set in a massive, explorable universe marks the latest chapter of EA's collaboration with Disney and the Marvel Games team. To drive player engagement and deliver return for our shareholders, we will build unrivaled IP-driven platforms that entertain massive online communities, tell blockbuster stories, and amplify the power of community in and around our games. Being thoughtful and deliberate around feature sets, Launch timing and quality will lead to long-term profitability as we invest in our vision and lead the future of entertainment. Now, I'll hand the call over to Stuart to provide additional details on our business.