Square Enix Holdings. Has Shed Nearly $2 Billions

Yeah, i couldnt relate the text with OP post.

tl;dr
All the entertainment brands are participating in a massive social experiment, serving political agendas. Blackrock, Vanguard, Blackstone ESG - look it up

I guess square enix.... isn't holding

"Slightly" hyperbolic only? :P

Honestly let's set aside personal emotional feels on SE games and only look at its ability to generate profit:

SE earnings per share in 2023: $3.57
https://companiesmarketcap.com/square-enix/eps/

Capcom: $1.98
https://companiesmarketcap.com/capcom/eps/

Nintendo: $3.35
https://companiesmarketcap.com/nintendo/eps/

Ubisoft: $0.74 in 2022
https://companiesmarketcap.com/ubisoft/eps/

EA: $3.26
https://companiesmarketcap.com/electronic-arts/eps/

Blizzard: $2.77
https://companiesmarketcap.com/activision-blizzard/eps/

Basically it did better than A LOT of game company already lol.

There are company that did better than SE of course, in case people complain about cherry pick again:
Sony: $5.50
https://companiesmarketcap.com/sony/eps/

Compare with many other companies that aren't Sony, SE is quite competitive when it comes to profit generation. This is based on data, not my personal feel about it.

Rooks is correct about stock price fluctuations. Stock price is heavily affected by market emotions so it can't be the only factor on deciding how good a company is at making money. If the market forecast a company will do well and they fail to meet the expectations, stock price will decrease. But not meeting expectations =/= not profitable. Apparently that is what a lot of people believe.

EPS is a much accurate metric to determine a company's profit generation ability.

Also: If you 100% believe SE is on it's way out feel free to short it. You'd be rich if you are correct!

It's easy to make predictions, it's a different story if you lose money every time you are wrong.

At least Rooks put his money on SE stocks based on his own predictions so I would take his opinion far more seriously than people who would argue SE dying on forums all day long but never have the courage to put money on their own prediction lol.

The reason why BG3 is popular, besides the game being a strong crpg, is because many people in the gaming community, for whatever reason, use it to bash Diablo 4/FF16/Starfield despite those are drastically different type of games.

Which probably increased BG3's traffic beyond usual crpg community. Since it's being brought up in every post about Diablo 4/FF16/Starfield lol.


This is the problem in gaming community these days. Playing a Bethesda rpg and expect it to be a bioware rpg, when they totally aim for completely different type players with different playing experiences. Then calling it trash for being a different type of game.

You should compare starfield with Fallout 4 or something, or games with a super big world to explore and mods. You shouldn't compare Bethesda games with cinematic story focused experience like Mass Effect. To my knowledge Bethesda literally never make that kind of game ever, why would people play Starfield and expect to see ME lol.

Same applies to FF16 hate. Using BG3 to bash FF16 is just absurd, those are very different games. If you want to criticize FF16 at least use a different cinematic action/arpg game.

People need to accept that every game has personality and they all aim for different kind of experiences. You should be picking games based on your preferred experience, not to compare different games and criticize it for them being what they are.

Every once in a while a game comes along that does something so good that it becomes the new standard and everything afterwards will have to live up to that standard.

For instance after someone has played dark messiah or dark souls chances are their tollerance for weak and weightless first or third person combat drops towards zero.
The genre almost doesn't matter, if the mechanic is a core part of your product you'll have to deliver similar quality and the only way people might gloss over flaws in that regard is if you do some other core part of the gameplay really well.

I only played maybe 2-3 of bethesda games and from those my conclusion is the thing bethesda does exceptionally well is marketing.

This is not a fair comparison. SE is large, but they don't have all their 5k employee working on one single project.

According to this article FF16 has over 300 developers:
https://exputer.com/news/games/final-fantasy-16-dev-over-300/

BG3 has over 400:
https://gamingbolt.com/baldurs-gate-3-has-400-people-working-on-it

Which probably make BG3 AAA tier game in terms of budget. It's by no means a cheap game in any way.

This game is also in EA for 3 years. So basically they continue to make money before they even complete the game. Which solved the problem of content being cut in order to meet budget limit.

If there is something that SE can learn from Larian, it's probably the use of Early access IMO. It's already a proven fact that games with long Early access are more likely to do well. Many indie hits like Slay the Spire and Hades all has 1 year long EA. BG3 EA is 3 years which is lonnnnnng but probably worth it.

they merged, it wasn't a buyout.

@afania

EPS is a wild number to look at since share splits and share price in general vary a ton. if a share is $100 and your EPS is $5, that is worse than a share that is $10 with an EPS of $3.

anywho, to your comment about if people believe SE is on their way out they should short it.. the stock is down now 15% over the last 5 years, 22% over the last 6 months. the market by comparison is up 30% over the last 5 years and 7% over the last 6 months. this gives you a delta of the market out performing SE by 37% over the last 5 years and 29% over the last 6 months. not great in a time where video game companies have absolutely surged due to covid. activision by comparison is up 14% over the last 5 years, out performing SE by 29%

it's very fair to say anyone that has shorted SE in that time frame has likely made bank.

my last post on this topic though since you'll probably bring up monopoly money as some sort of frame to view the company in.

SE is dog ***, everyone that has paid attention in the last 10 years knows it. you don't know it because you are a simp(this word is super overused but it's the best one here) for their content and you don't dare to venture out at all so the rapid decline is something you cannot come to terms with.

thanks!

That didn't contradict any of my point though. Capcom has share price of $38.25 with $1.98 eps, v.s SE at $35.57 with eps of $3.57.

Or Nintendo's share price at $42.99 which generates eps of $3.35.

Or Blizzard has a share price of $91.82 with eps of $2.77....etc

By your logic all of these gaming companies are worse at generating profit. Idk why people target at SE specifically when everyone else aren't generating that much more profit at all.

If SE is doing poorly, then so does everyone else with even worse return.


You said they are on their way out in next 5 years, not "down 15% in past 6 months"(this isn't prediction, this is rephrasing what has already happened). So far you haven't backup your own prediction with data or put money on your own prediction.



I don't care about their content lol. I only judge base on data and what actually happened.

I'll believe SE is on their way out after 5 years when they are gone. Or at least negative earnings for several years. Until then it's just another internet "prediction" with nothing to back up except strong emotions.

guess we'll see!

you were here a few weeks ago saying ff16 was gods gift to earth and SE was doing wonderfully with it.

all reporting and the word from SE themselves is it fell far short of expectations.

we'll get another pulse check from you in a few more months after another failure i'm sure.

i know you're being willfully obtuse, as always, but EPS is a complicated metric to go off and doesn't always mean a company is doing well. you're correct that stock price doesn't mean a company is doing well either.

if you put $1k into SE 5 years ago you would have less equity than if you put it into a random smallcap by the tune of somewhere between 25-30%. i'm not sure what you're trying to prove. please read up on EPS if you think it means that a company is doing well.

Link? Pretty sure I didn't say anything about gods gift, I only said FF16 received positive reviews on metacritic, which is...ummm...Fact?. It's actually kinda funny that you read "positive metacritic review" into "God's gift" LOL.


So what is your metric then? Post them. You post nothing yourself so far.

So far all I ever read from you is "I predict SE is dying because I said so".


If this is your metric, by your metric Blizzard also failed since it's stock price is also +14% in the past 5 years, about the same as SE(both at +14%), which makes it a worse investment than your "random smallcap" just like SE. And it's in USD so no currency excuse!

Haven't seen you criticize Blizzard using the same metric yet. Doesn't seem like a fair statement to me.

Edit: And Electronic art and Ubisoft. Ubisoft is clearly THE example of how a dying game company would look like, -68% in the past 5 years, owner wants to sell but no buyers. SE isn't anywhere close at that level and yet it gets more hate here. Idk why people focus on SE only.

the best post I've read in years on these forums.
thank you.

Except his number is all wrong, lol. In JPY SE is about +14% from the past 5 years just like Blizzard. It only looks like it's stock price decrease because JPY to USD went from 0.0088 to 0.0068 in the past 5 years, and he uses USD to calculate all JP stock price lol.

In other words, if you short SE stock in the past 5 years in JPY you would make less money than simply holding USD in 2018 then convert it to JPY now. Its JPY that is devaluing, not SE stocks. Using currency fluctuation to argue one company's performance when companies have zero control on a country's currency policy makes absolutely zero sense. I find it hard to take this statement seriously.

Almost half the stock is owned by a single family, with more then half of that being in a trust, so they aren't selling. A stocks price has zero meaning unless someone is buying or selling it.

https://ycharts.com/companies/SQNXF/dividend
https://www.investing.com/equities/square-enix-holdings-co-ltd-dividends

They have a funky as heck payout schedule but seems to be in the 1~2% range. Due to their size of ownership, the Fukushima family is still getting a ton of money.

Current family ownership is 57,554,000, with 23,626,000 owned by the guy and the rest in various trusts or financial entities. On Jun 5th 2023 they got paid a 0.8597 dividend (after yen to dollar conversion) per share for $49.4 million USD. On Dec 6th they will get another payout of 0.0717 per share, 4.1 million USD. June 5th of 2024 is expected to be 0.623 per share payout.

That is what most people here do not understand. SE is owned and run by a family, not a bazillion investors who only care about cashing out their stocks. As long as that family is making $45~50 million USD a year, they couldn't care what anyone else thinks.

why does this child keep talking in JPY? it's absolutely astounding. in JPY activision(who is blizzard on the stock exchange?) is up about 60% in the timeframe you laid out

stock price definitely matters, it's the best metric we have to determine a companies valuation (assets, IP, potential, EPS).

so much *** cope lol..

What you're saying about SE in general is largely correct but this has always been wrong. This was based from a single source who worded their tweet incorrectly when translating an earnings call and the internet ran with it like the herd of morons that they typically are. It was later clarified by that same exact source. Takeshi didn't bother including this information in any of his future hit pieces on the game/SE though, and people who aren't willing to do any of their own research ran with his *** as usual.

https://x.com/gibbogame/status/1688408499104178176?s=20

Overall SE was happy with XVI's performance and expects it to perform even better when PS5 exclusivity is over. Their high end is almost never met for anything. Even the golden child FF7R failed to hit that.

Again, XVI is perhaps the only new non-mmo title they've released in the last 2~ years that has performed well enough to be called a success. Blaming it, and especially blaming it alone, for SE's current state is some clownery. If I were a major investor into SE I'd also question my investment, not because of XVI, but because they release 15 bad games for every 1 good one.

Blizzard is an American company why would you calculate it in JPY lol. You are just arguing for the sake of arguing now.

And even then how you do where do you get that 60% number?

1 USD equal to 113 JPY in 2018
1 USD equal to 147 JPY now.

Blizzard stock price in 2018: 80.29
Blizzard stock price now: 91.82

Converting it to JPY: Blizzard in 2023: 91.82 USD= 13568 JPY
In 2018 it's 9072 JPY.

Which makes it 49.5% increase adding the currency gain, not 60%.

Either way I find your numbers mostly not convincing, numbers like this makes me feel you are arguing to bash SE, not arguing to provide correct numbers. Honestly not worth it.

Whoa, there. Don't get it twisted. My SQEX position is pure sentiment, nothing more.

OMFG!

Plot twist!!

R00ks keeps FFXIAH alive only so he can profit over FFXI stocks!

Pure sentiment? No faith after all that stock market post!

49.5% compared to 14%, activision is still winning that one.

your take is asinine and bordering on idiocy. if you sell your stock on the tokyo stock exchange for yen today that you purchased 5 years ago and purchase a similiar stock for USD on the new york stock exchange, on average you will be taking a position somewhere near 40% less than if you just invested in the same arbitrary stock 5 years prior.

this money will be valued the same everywhere, otherwise people would be constantly moving things between stock exchanges and retiring within weeks.

converting it to yen doesn't make it some magical money hack and does not mean it grew anywhere near where the rest of the market did. in USD on the NYSE, it is down. this is a beyond dishonest argument to make.

SE is also likely not a company that is undervalued, it has a ton of fans like yourself worldwide (much like tesla fans of a few years back) who think the company can do no wrong, thus likely inflating the stock price. this is what we call an overly optimistic trade and something that an analyst would advise you to sell or hold. tesla bucked that trend but i don't think SE has the same roadmap.

i cannot believe i've had to explain this multiple times.

i've held stocks i've believed in for not logical reasons before, i get it. i'm sure anyone who invests has.

SE is one of those stocks, if you think otherwise you're silly.

Your entire arguement was "SE is on it's way out because it's stock price decreased" and "it will die within 5 years".

When in fact, SE stock price didn't decrease. It's JPY currency price decrease which is completely unrelated to SE performance. This makes your "SE is on it's way out " argument completely baseless.

It doesn't matter if you invest in SE using USD and ended up losing money because of JPY currency decrease. Nor it matters if you invest in Blizzard 5 years ago and ended up making more money. Currency value is NOT the same as stock value, period.

The bottom line is you can't argue a company is on it's way out because of their currency value decrease. You can argue it's dying if EPS continue to decline or something, or if that company is losing key technology/IP/people. Which is an argument that you didn't/can't make.

The rest of your argument are pretty much all feels.

Massive 2005 "FFXI IS DYING WONT LAST 2 MORE YEARS" vibes.

i'm sorry that you're wrong. take a look at any other international stock that is based in japan and deals in yen. take a look at mitusbishi. they have GREATLY out performed SE. the stock markets golden currency is the dollar, it's what everyone talks about everything in. SE is traded on the NYSE therefore even moreso it is talked about in the dollar. if SE was out performing the market they would be doing it in USD as well. not only all that but if this were true you'd see them shifting the prices of their game downwards in USD to reflect the value of the yen declining compared to it. what you're arguing is objectively false, sorry.

OTHERWISE YOU WOULD SEE A MASSIVE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE TRADING INTO YEN AND BUYING SE STOCK BECAUSE IT WOULD BE A STEAL.

there is no barrier to doing the above. it's not suffering because the yen is going down in value, it's suffering because its a ***company that big investors don't see as having intrinsic value.

not wasting any more time with a child that opted out of putting his 6% company match 401k money into smallcaps and instead is losing money every year investing in a dying video game company

Except nobody is arguing SE outperform everything else on the planet LOL.

I only argued SE's performance is about the same as 5 years ago.

I also said your argument often has error in it.

I did not say SE is the best investment on the planet.

You predicted SE will die within 5 years and I call it questionable. Didn't even say you are wrong. Only wanted proof which you offered none. I doubt you already short it to prove your prediction being correct too.

Sorry, not buying any of your statement.

not really, they almost always sell for parts.

google "defunct video game companies _insert country here_"

SE themselves has had a hand in shutting down quite a few due to incredibly poor management, insert japan in the above and click on any and it's almost always SE that bought them and then ran things into the ground.

edit: probably why they keep selling their relevant IP sans FF/heavy fantasy cult following IP because they know they suck at doing anything with it

SE is down in USD. USD is the currency people talk about when a stock is traded on the NYSE, which it is. SE will die or be sold for parts in the next 5 years :D. i'd also assume a large portion of SEs profits are actually IN USD since they have a large north american presence and all their games are sold in that currency at a higher rate than anywhere else!