JoWooD Reports Small Loss, Steady Results

Author: by David Jenkins, Simon Carless

Officials from Austrian-headquartered publisher JoWooD Productions have announced the company’s third quarter and nine month results for the period ended September 30th. For the nine months since January 2004 the company’s EBIT (earnings before interest and tax), amounted to €1,190,899 ($1,532,578). Unfortunately, the 'group result after minorities', essentially the profit/loss figure for the company, which is publically listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange, ended up in a loss of €1,474,000 ($1,897,000) apparently due to a tax write-off related to the reduction of the Austrian federal income tax rate. JoWood employed 140 full-time employees and 49 freelancers as of September 30th, 2004, and the German language-centric publisher particularly mentioned Ski Racing 2005 Featuring Hermann Maier as a major Q4 title, as well as noting fiscal year 2005 games including Gothic III and the licensed console title Stargate. The company expects the fiscal year 2004 revenues to be in the range of €23 to 25 million ($30 to $32 million), and predict the EBIT to be around 10 percent of revenue over the entire fiscal year - a profit of around $3 million before the 'minorities' that are currently dragging the company into the red.