Despite Employee Strife, Activision Blizzard Beats Wall Street Expectations

Sam Blake

Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake

Despite Employee Strife, Activision Blizzard Beats Wall Street Expectations

Despite facing lawsuits from California and investors surrounding its "frat boy" workplace culture, Activision Blizzard beat Wall Street's expectations for revenue and forecasted revenue.


Revenues of $1.92 billion were slightly down from the company's banner 2020 second quarter, but surpassed analysts expectations of about $1.89 billion.

Still, the scandal has cast a shadow over the company; CEO Bobby Kotick went on the defense on Tuesday's earnings call with a four-and-a-half minute statement about his commitment to setting things right by Activision employees.

"People will be held accountable for their actions," Kotick said, adding that he will terminate employees "where appropriate," along with company managers and leaders who impede the evaluation and addressing of claims of harassment and discrimination.

Activision's share price was down as much as almost 6% earlier in the day, but rebounded in after-hours trading to a 4% rise from the opening bell.

The workplace-culture imbroglio predominated the question-and-answer portion of the usually dry earnings call.

Chief Operating Officer Daniel Alegre pointed to Blizzard's hiring of an outside law firm to review the company's workforce policies and procedures as a sign of its commitment to improvement. Earlier Tuesday, though, a group of activist Activision employees published a letter criticizing the company's choice of the law firm.

Meanwhile, Gary Cheng filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday in California's Central District Court against Activision on behalf of shareholders for securities fraud surrounding the company's failure to disclose its workplace crisis, claiming this artificially inflated the stock price. Chen is being represented by The Rosen Law Firm of Downtown L.A.

And at least one senior-level human relations executive has recently left the company, said an Activision representative.

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Spencer Rascoff

Spencer Rascoff serves as executive chairman of dot.LA. He is an entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso and Supernova, and who served as Zillow's CEO for a decade. During Spencer's time as CEO, Zillow won dozens of "best places to work" awards as it grew to over 4,500 employees, $3 billion in revenue, and $10 billion in market capitalization. Prior to Zillow, Spencer co-founded and was VP Corporate Development of Hotwire, which was sold to Expedia for $685 million in 2003. Through his startup studio and venture capital firm, 75 & Sunny, Spencer is an active angel investor in over 100 companies and is incubating several more.

​Ian Cinnamon
Ian Cinnamon

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Raises
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Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

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InLA

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