AnotherInvestor,
Hi! Always good to have prospectives running around...:)
To me, a forboding signal is layoffs. That always has been bad news, in my experience. A steady head count, OTOH, can be looked at two ways. Either the company is content with its current forcasted growth and doesn't need to further expand, or as you say, they aren't anticipating top line growth (a bad sign).
I think in this case, ATVI has made it clear that they plan on growing revenues by 40-45%. This is clearly an aggressive position, and I believe that mgmt feels they can achieve this number with the current headcount. This does not exclude them from hiring in the future, mind you, just this year. Besides a healthy organization that has high revs per employee means they are working efficiently....a good sign. All in all, I don't think you should worry about this much.
I don't know what previous numbers look like for hiring...they mentioned this little fact in passing.
Let us know what you find in your research! Maybe there's things we others haven't picked up!
Tom |
