Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: EA) today announced preliminary financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full year ended March 31, 2020. "We're humbled to see people around the world connecting through our games during this unprecedented period," said CEO Andrew Wilson. "Our focus continues to be on everything we can do for our people, our players, and our communities. Thanks to the amazing dedication and determination of our teams at Electronic Arts, we're able to deliver the games, experiences and content choices that our players are looking for during this challenging time."

"We've had a strong year. Our results this quarter prove the value of the live services path we've been on now for a decade. The breadth and depth of our live services give the flexibility we need at times like this to meet player needs," said COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen. "I want to thank everyone at EA for rising to the challenge. People across the company have shown extraordinary innovation, energy and ingenuity. Learnings from this period will forever change the way we work at EA."elected Operating Highlights and Metrics

• Digital net bookings for the fiscal year was $4.052 billion, up 9% year-over-year and now represents 78% of total net bookings.
• FIFA 20 has more than 25 million unique players to date.
• Madden NFL 20 reached the highest engagement levels in franchise history.
• Apex Legends was the most downloaded free-to-play game on PS4 in calendar 2019.
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has more than 10 million unique players to date.
• In every quarter of fiscal 2020, monthly average players in The Sims 4 were higher than the comparable period in the prior year.

Selected Financial Highlights and Metrics

All financial measures are presented on a GAAP basis.

• Net cash from operating activities was $498 million for the quarter and $1.797 billion for the fiscal year.
• EA repurchased 2.7 million shares for $291 million during the quarter, bringing the total for the last twelve months to 12.3 million shares for $1.207 billion.

Impact of COVID-19 on our Business Operations and Outlook

• We have focused on actions to support our people, our players, and our communities around the world affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Substantially all of our global workforce has shifted to work from home, and our primary focus continues to be the safety and well-being of our employees. Our IT, security and digital platform teams mobilized to add capacity to our remote working systems to scale to a fully distributed workforce.
• Throughout this time, our studio teams have continued to deliver live service content while working from home. We launched our "Stay Home, Play Together" initiative to bring our players together when physical distancing is keeping us apart, and we've delivered dozens of Stay & Play programs to date, from special community livestreams and giveaways, to athletes and celebrities playing our games with fans. Our esports teams have conducted major online tournaments, and we've executed or plan to execute in the coming months more than 100 celebrity, athlete, community and charity online esports events.
• With more people staying at home, we have experienced, and are continuing to experience, heightened levels of engagement and live services net bookings growth to date. The full extent of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to our business, operations and financial results will depend on numerous evolving factors that we are not able to predict. The key risks to EA's business are set forth under the heading "Forward-Looking Statements" in this release.

Fiscal Year 2021 Expectations - Ending March 31, 2021

• Beginning in fiscal year 2021, we will make two changes to the way we report net bookings.
• First, we will report mobile bookings gross of platform fees, instead of net, to align with industry practice. This will result in a gross up in net bookings but no change to underlying profit.
• Second, we will update the presentation of net bookings by composition to focus on full game and live services sales & other, in line with the direction we continue to drive the business.
• Our fiscal year 2021 guidance reflects both of these changes. Where relevant, financial data for fiscal 2020 is recast for comparability. Please refer to our FY21 Financial Reporting Update on our IR website for additional information.

Financial metrics:

• Net revenue is expected to be approximately $5.525 billion.
• Change in deferred net revenue (online-enabled games) is expected to be approximately $25 million.
• Net income is expected to be approximately $978 million.
• Diluted earnings per share is expected to be approximately $3.35.
• Operating cash flow is expected to be approximately $1.575 billion.
• The Company estimates a share count of 292 million for purposes of calculating fiscal year 2021 diluted earnings per share.

Operational metric:

• Net bookings is expected to be approximately $5.550 billion. For comparison purposes, if fiscal 2020 were to be recast in the same way, we would have reported net bookings of $5.375 billion.